


Sea Salt

by Khemi



Series: Sea Salt [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Drowning, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Merman Bro, Merstuck, Mind Manipulation, Minor Violence, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sexual Content, Soul-Searching, Tentacle Dick, Unconventional Families, Undine Dirk, Water Spirit, bro is not dirk and grandpa is not jake, they are all separate characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-04-07 06:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4253022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khemi/pseuds/Khemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things in this world, ancient and old, that are not meant for the walkers of air. They bleed salt water and sing songs of the sea, their power old and terrible and barely kept at bay.</p><p>A Merman betraying his father to love a man of the land is just a sign of the changing tides, but soon the choice will raise a storm that might tear all he has come to love apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For This Sea, She Is My Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [a picture](http://my-friend-the-frog.tumblr.com/post/134199060824/yoookissomuruschag-my-friend-the-frog-i) by Chofi, and originally requested by an anon.
> 
> All shanties and songs are written **by me** ; I may be uploading the audio at some point and will link it if I do so.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins with the threat of an end, and memories scattered by the wrath of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ade's POV._

_If she lays me low, boy,_  
_do not cry for me,_  
_do not hate these waters_  
_for my choice was the sea._  
_If you pull me out, boy,_  
_give me breath with care,_  
_for this sea, she is my blood,_  
_and jealous of the air._

 

 

He isn’t breathing when you pull him out of the water.

You wish you knew how to make theses dark-skinned things  _breathe._

Without any guidance or knowledge of what exists beneath his fragile skin and drenched hair, your fingers tangle over his chest and throat, seeking the beat you’ve spent so long listening to, begging for it to come back.

 _Please,_ you whisper, like Poseidon will hear you. Like the Mers’ wilful father would care for the likes of this legged creature who steals his children from the water to feast upon them in the realm of air.  _Please._

You suck in a breath through your gills, then lean down to him, pushing on his chest to coax that beat out as you try and force air into him between your joined lips.

_Please._

_Please-_

.:.

_“Release me!”_

He’s breathing fire through a tube, and you choke on the smoke that the wind carries to you, until it’s hurriedly waved away and the tube is tipped out, leaving a black puddle of ash and leaves bobbing with the rock of the sea. Your gills fan into the clear air, sucking it in while he stows that tube amongst the colourful fabrics that clothe him.

“By Jove,” he utters, in a tongue you didn’t expect to understand, and reaches out to you. The feel of fingertips on your scales where they’re pressed roughly to infernal netting is foul, and you struggle, bearing your teeth in an empty threat. What are you going to do? Your arms are bound uselessly behind you, caught between the burn of ropes and the uncomfortable bend of your back.

Maybe if you tug this way- no  _that_ way- no  _this way-_

He pulls off the fabric shell that was cupped over his hair, clasping it to his chest with fingers that tremble with the weakness of the air. His fingers are dark, like they’ve been coated in oil and mud so long it sunk into his skin, and you wonder if it’s a trait of these air-creatures that they look like the children of the night, where you glow with the light of the sweetest mother sun that filters to the depths just for you.

“By the grace of God have I seen a miracle,” the man of air whispers, talking to himself as if in madness. You shoot him another look, and whip your tail in the netting, crying out when you feel several scales catch and tear from you. No!  _No_ , you won’t end like this, broken and defenceless in some foul net!

You roar, startling him from his daze with the ferocity of an ocean storm. He drops his fabric shell and stumbles to grab it and force it back upon his hair, burying the curls that freely sit, coiled and dry, instead of slicked down to his scalp as your golden locks are. Even they are drying in this sun, as is all of you. What will get you first, then? His knife, or the thirst?

“Sorry, terribly sorry-” He reaches out, knife in his hand a-glitter with promises of doom. How  _dare_ he  _apologise,_ filthy creature- You need no apologies, let him kill you with honour or-!

The rope gives way as his knife saws swiftly through it, and all at once your thoughts splash away with the surface breaking around you, and the blissful cool of the water wrapping you up in its welcome embrace.

Your first impulse is to flee, to descend beyond the sunlight and spread warnings of the air-walker who  _knows,_ so his silence may be kept or taken by force with a hundred hands rocking his vessel until he is dragged down to rest upon the ocean floor.

Your second thought is that you are free.

Free by  _his_ hand.

You glance towards the rippling image of his face, green eyes luminescent amongst the darkness they sit in.

The image lingers long after you turn and vanish deep below.

You tell no one of him, and wonder why you keep his secrets as you drift in the currents, your sleeping half dreaming of smoke and blade.

.:.

_A flicker-_

You can feel his heart, though it is weak. Your palm spreads flat to seek the beat, before you tear his shirt apart and kissing across his heaving chest, begging it to rise and fall as it should. He is no creature of the water and it cannot take him from you, it cannot punish you for this. Let your sins rest heavy on your shoulders and drag you to the deepest vent, but let him breathe on and not suffer for your crime.

_Please._

You breathe into his lips, cupping his neck, your clawed nails running through the hair on his chest and coaxing the water within to shift and leave him. You have asked nothing of the ocean for as long as you have lived there.

If it gives you anything, let it be  _him._

.:.

The second time, he is adrift in the same flows, though no net awaits you. Instead, vibrations spread through the swell, and as your ears twitch and focus, you pick up a melancholy song like those that pass in the night, in the wake of the older vessels that carry those air-walkers who still remember the old tales your race one shared with them.

You shouldn’t have come back. You had no reason to. Your life should have been enough of a blessing that you did not need to risk it again for the sake of a glimpse of green and yet another story for him to share with those he walks amongst on land.

But the song is beautiful.

You paddle far higher than you intended, until your head breaks the water beneath the sparkling stars.

He is waiting, but his words barely hitch. You float at the will of the ocean, carried in each rise and fall as his vessel is, and your soul is just as buoyant on the waves of his song as they lift you up, then soothe you back down, tempting you a little closer.

How embarrassed your sisters would be to see you lost in the melody of air, so enamoured that you let your ears fan and glow for him like you were courting yourself a mate.

Is this how they court? Are you sure you want to find out?

“…Harley,” he murmurs, as the song ends, your fingers curling over the edge of the vessel. You could so easily break it, and pull him down with you. Silence his song and the risk it carries.

And yet…

“ _Adelphos.”_ You tap your chest, dragging your tongue across your parted lips. “I am the Brother.”

His fingers catch yours, running lightly over them, and your fins are bright with gold, asking something of him he doesn’t understand. For the longest time, you sit in silence, and then you slip back below the water, and try not to falter too often as you hear his song begin again.

.:.

“Harley,” you moan, long and mournful as a whale’s bittersweet cry. At last, he breathes, but after the first splutter and rush of water, it is so soft and frail that you worry it will cease again at any moment. The moon shines for you, lighting his face with silver as you curl upon him and kiss at his cheek, and jaw, and throat. Gold sparks across your fins, a memory and a prayer mixed together, and you press into the crook of his neck with a shudder to your gills as they draw uneven breath.

“Come back and I’ll stay,” you tell him, promise him. “Just come back to me, come back…”

His breath stays light as the moon dips lower, so you close your eyes and hold him, and all of your mind dreams together.

.:.

“I rather gather this is terribly unseemly,” Harley observes, the first time you pull yourself up into his boat. He settles down and you slither over, putting your arms either side of his chest and staring down at him with eyes as wide and alight as the fins that still shine their silent demands down at him.

“My people all but forbid it,” you agree, accent thick and lyrical, or so he tells you. “I have never really enjoyed listening to them.”

“Hm.” His fingers slip into your hair, threading through it and rubbing across the slippery skin beneath. “Good. I’m afraid I would not like to lose you, now. I have got rather used to these little nightly jaunts.”

“I do not force you to come back.”

“I don’t insist you come pop up to the surface and provide me my night light.” Harley’s smile is soft, lighting up his face. He shivers as you touch the silver that stains his temples. “I suppose that makes us even?”

Maybe. You don’t know. You don’t know much of anything, any more.

“Why do they do that?” Harley murmurs, as his fingers brush over the fins that frame your face. You shudder, leaning to his touch and letting out a shrill coo of approval. “Oh-”

The moment he tries to pull his hand back, you catch it, rubbing your face against his palm, first your nose and your cheek and then your lips and your tongue. He shifts under you, breath growing shorter as you open your eyes and lock gazes with him above his fingertips. You smile. The curve of your lips against his skin makes him give a sound that has your mating glow growing brighter, and forces you to draw back.

“They do that because you tempt me, Harley,” you explain plainly, and his laugh sounds as strained as the fabric of his pelvic coverings.

“I feel I am a bad man for liking it,” the air-walker rasps, and you lean in to stroke your noses together, before catching his lips damply with your own.

.:.

Your dreams are jumbled, of sunlight and night both parting and crashing together and whipping into a storm.

You reach for a hand made of midnight and it slips from your grasp, before you pull it close and feel your light dimming as you surrender the sunlight to give everything to the moon instead.

.:.

His panted breaths are deep but end with a short gasp, and they sound as heavy as the smoke that he smells of when your bury your nose against his shoulder. Your skin against his is the crash of the foam onto a darkened shore, and just as fierce when your nails leave ghosts of the moon in his flesh and draw more sweet cries from his split lips.

He calls to his God, and you sing to yours, lost in the warmth of his flesh as your seeking length forces deeper into the body he surrendered to you with a whisper and a sigh.

When the air-walkers speak of drowning, you have never understood them, but now you think you might. He is too much and not enough, filling every inch of you even as you demand more of him, stealing your breath as you seek to force all of his from him in deep vibrations that have you blazing with need from your fins to the tip of your tail.

“More, please,” he croons, and you chirp and hiss in his ear, sinking your teeth into the tender flesh below it. His blood tastes of dropped anchors, and the threat of a blade. You force your shaft deeper on an impulse as deep in your being as the need to mark him, to make him yours.

_Mine, mine, mine-_

_“Yours,”_ He groans, and you wonder when you started growling it aloud. “Oh, yours, _yours,_ please love-”

You are blinding with the light of your bond as his heat consumes you, losing yourself in the urges and the call to mate him like the sow you were meant to take. If he understands, you cannot tell, but from the throb of his skin and the tightness with which he grips you inside and out, you can tell he does not care.

More prayers leave his lips, and you silence them with your fingers, until he sucks them to slickness and you start to rub the firm shaft he nervous bared to you as though you might disapprove.

You decide you are  _very_ pleased with it when he shudders and chokes out an attempt at your name, wet heat spilling in several bursts across you fingers.

You flood him, and he whines, curled against the floor of the boat and spasming through a second orgasm as your hot seed burns up his over-sensitive nerves.

When your mind returns to you, you curl around your mate, still within him, and tell him you’ll be his forever, loving the way the oath makes him moan.

.:.

You wake a few times, to the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning. His breath is easier, but you are afraid, and drag him unsteadily into a cave high enough the waves cannot touch you, stroking his dried hair and pressing your forehead to his as you whisper the same promise, made bitter by sea salt tears on your cheeks.

.:.

“You  _swore_ to me!”

The betrayal in his words is worse than the wound his knife left in your fin, splitting it in half from edge to near your skull. You are still cupping it in your hand as you dart backwards through the water, growling lowly to try and warn him away.

There are rocks hidden here, even so close to the shore, and currents that will suck him down. You raise your voice to try to keep him back, but still he forces on. Fool! Idiot! If he wants to die for the sake of striking you, then fine! What do you care!

The thought makes you whine.

“Harley, they are moving on, I have to go with them.”

“You told me you didn’t care for your people!” He snaps, and between the spray and the rain, only the wet edge to his words tells you he is crying. “You told me you would stay! I have  _nothing_ but  _you!_ My family rot in the earth and my friends are long gone, but  _you-!”_

 _“_ I didn’t do this to you out of choice! I thought I could stay!”

“ _You can stay!”_ He slips and you see him wince as he slices his foot, the smell of blood bright in the water as it crashes against you. “You can always stay! Come with me, we can find somewhere, just us!”

“No-” You cannot tell him about the threats, the way they forced you to confess with a row of shark teeth to your throat and the grasp of poison jellies wrapped around you until you could barely think. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“No you  _aren’t!”_ He swipes at you, striking your arm, and you screech without meaning to, making him grasp at his ears. The noise is unholy, and it will echo far down the shore you met him upon.

It has him trying to stagger back, and you see the moment the floor cannot hold him, and the pull of the ocean grasps at him instead, a punishment for a sin you should have known better than to commit.

You should have stayed far away from the songs of the air.

 _“Harley!_ ” You scream, and for a split second his gaze meets yours, all anger drained from it, before he is jerked down and but for a few spluttering breaths the surface closes above him, the current dragging him across the rocks towards deeper waters. You drop and follow, as fast as your tail can carry you, slicing through the water and fighting to break into the stream that holds him and drags him down.

It tastes of magic, and you know it was sent to force your hand, to take him from you so you had nothing left to sway your loyalty.

_No._

You do not want them, do not want anything, nothing but _him-_

The current breaks as you force your way into it, and you grasp for him, his clothes heavy and his face empty of all but the pallid sheen of your punishment. You screech a warning to carry on the tides and the flow, to carry deep into the darkness where the sun will never reach and warn them that  _this_ child of air, that  _this_ man of midnight, he is  _yours._

He was yours.

You turn towards the surface and swim frantically, hearts unsteadily beating as fast as the stars are far, and though every muscle aches and screams for relief you can’t stop, can’t slow, can’t lose him,

_can’t lose him-_

.:.

You sit and stare at the wreckage upon the rocks, the dead of the sea and the remains on the shore that did not survive the storm. In the aftermath, all is quiet, and still. The sea is at peace, and you watch it glitter under the sun, a liar who gives no sign of the violence wrought but a day before.

A mournful moan slips from you, and echoes away across the surface, answered fleetingly by the distant call of birds who pass to warmer climes.

“Is it over?”

His fingers close around your shoulder, and you lean into them, kissing each and every one as he unsteadily sits beside you. The tremble to him is not something you miss, but it too will pass. The storm is calm, now. All is well.

“Where to?” You ask, wondering if tomorrow the sky will be as clear. He laughs, shaking his head.

“I haven’t a clue, lad. But we’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

You sound afraid, voice trembling with the memory of a pale face, and angry teeth bared, and those that might yet come for you. Harley kisses your fin gently where he cut it, then your lips as you turn.

“I promise,” he murmurs, and you believe him, smiling as he kisses all the sea salt from your cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fanart for this chapter by friendly doodle anon.](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/120946788487/his-panted-breaths-are-deep-but-end-with-a-short)


	2. Sing A Song of Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To the air, then, shall go the traitor and his love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Harley's POV_

_Sing a song of air, boy,_  
_sing it by the shore,_  
_tempt the lasses from the deep_  
_to swim so deep no more._  
_Wait for them on sand, boy,_  
_tempt them by and by,_  
_but let them sing not of the sea,_  
_or soon ‘neath waves you’ll lie._

 

  

Your Mer is heavier than you reckoned, and though he complained heartily when you slung him across your shoulders, since you started singing he’s settled down to pick idly at the torn shreds of your shirt instead, the pin-prick dots of his tail aglow under your fingers. You’d call them stars if they weren’t lost in gold, so as you hum your way past the odd lyric that escapes your memory, you decide they’re sun-spots instead, and promise yourself that some day you’ll map each path between them, consign it to your memory, and treasure it eternally.

It’s a long walk to the shack, but you can at least place the path. Never have you been so thankful that you live such a lonely existence.

Well- that you  _lived_ one so lonely.

Adelphos is unlikely to leave, you consider, given that he’s a blasted Mer and you live a good mile inland.

He pets down your back, and you realise he’s discovered your freckles as his fingers dart from place to place, a content purr escaping him. Perhaps he thinks of them as you think of his speckles; the craters and shadows on the dark side of the moon, his to explore and cherish.

What a strange day it is when that makes you smile and forget you’re weighed down by a fishtail twice as long as you are tall. But these are strange times, you suppose.

Yes, these are strange times indeed.

.:.

He’s lucky you keep enough fish that you have a good few barrels of sea water, though his gills all shiver and his eyes narrow as you pop the lid of one and empty it into the bath. It’s a good bath, well-made, a nice solid tin vessel that your father hammered out for you, last time he visited before he passed. It’s survived many years of use admirably, and you love it so.

Adelphos sneers when you gesture at it, his tail unrolling and flopping out onto the ground, the translucent skin all spread and glittering and far too dry.

“I am not a pet,” he utters harshly, voice less guttural than when you met him but hardly softened to a human tone. He slaps the floor with his fins and folds his arms. “I will not be kept like one.”

“So you’d prefer to dry out? I’m not sure what I’ll do with your dessicated corpse, but I might get a pretty penny from a museum, I suppose.” You speak to him in the same voice you would used with your grandchildren, before they cut their ties, and his ears droop in the same way their eyes cast down in embarrassment. “Ah yes, here’s the dusty old brat who near had me drowned then wouldn’t take a bath. I’d call it tragic but was that bugger’s own fault for being so full of his own toss he bought it.”

He blinks at you, slowly, and you swear you catch glimpse of a film that closes the wrong way.

“I do not know what you are saying.”

“I’m saying you’re an idiot.” You sigh. “Now get in the water before I have to carry you.”

You aren’t sure what you expected, honestly, but when he starts to drag himself across the floor in little hopping motions on his arms, pausing to heft his tail behind him, it takes every fibre of your being not to burst into hysterical laughter. Truly, the _noblest_ of Mers. The most  _mighty_ of warriors.

He stops at the bath’s edge and stares at it, tugging on it and stopping as soon as it starts to tip. It’s with a pout that he spreads his arms and flexes his fingers at you, and Jehovah do you  _wheeze_ as you realise he needs help getting in.

You brace as you curl your arms beneath him, tipping him in less than gracefully and wiping the sweat from your brow as you stand and watch him flop about, trying to get righted. He ends up on his back, only his nose and eyes above the water-

-and that massive, damnable tail, which is still trailing over half the floor.

“Oh,  _botheration_.” You march over and glare at it, as though it will simply curl up and vanish into his body, or shrink to a reasonable size. “What the Dickens am I going to do with  _this?”_

 _“_ I never complain about the size of your body parts,” your love burbles at you. His tail flips up and pats at you, and you catch it, holding it and marvelling at the texture. God, you could sit and pet this thing forever, though you suspect that wouldn’t exactly accomplish much. “Do you not have more water-holders?”

“Bowls… Cans… My barrels. My watering…” Well.  _That’s_ an idea. A terrible, awful idea, but still an idea. “Wait here.”

“Because I have so many other choices, Harley,” he calls after you, as you hurry out to the yard. You can hear him muttering to himself through the window as you rifle through your overgrown pumpkin patch, finally finding the half-buried can you knew was there. You scrub it under the tap, and pretend you don’t notice him go quiet as you sing to yourself, pretend that doesn’t bring a soft smile to your face.

Then you level the next barrel open, dip the vessel in, and walk back into the bathroom.

“…What are you doing.”

“It’s a temporary solution,” you explain, pleased with yourself. As you tip the can up, he cranes his neck to watch the broken streams that splash over his tail, and coos curiously.

“Is this a machine of air to make rain within your walls?”

You clear your throat. “Actually, it’s, well. Uh. We use it to water… plants.”

Adelphos has never looked as offended as he does in this moment.

“I am  _not_ some  _common plant_ to be  _watered!”_ He flicks his tail up and splashes you, the bath tipping with the weight and sloshing his sea-soak about. “I am a  _proud Mer,_ a  _mighty force to be reckoned with,_ I am  _not_ some air-weed to  _dampen_ with your wicked  _rainmaker-”_

 _“_ Well  _I_ am a proud sailor, but here I am watering the over-sized, talking tuna in my bathtub!” You flick the spout towards him and splash him, putting your other hand firmly on your hip. “So  _do_ shut up and let me water you before your tail is as good for swimming as a pickled mackerel!”

He huffs and goes quiet, sinking into the water to glare at you over the reflection of your ceiling. Satisfied, you finish showering your talking tuna lover, and are in such high spirits you even ignore him blowing water at you like a whale as you escape to gather maps, and books, and to figure out something big enough to hold his bloody _tail._

.:.

You dig him a pool in your garden, in the end, and he swims in lazy circles as you wiggle your feet in the waves behind him and flip through your atlas. Perhaps somewhere tropical? He sneers and talks to you of Mers big as sharks, with teeth to match. The North, then? No, there swim great polar Mers of gargantuan scale, who surface from the depths to swallow stray ships whole.

These coasts are guarded by his sisters, who will savage you if they ever catch you, and the coast to the west is marked territory of those he has old scores to settle with, marked deep into his flesh by the scars you had not thought to ask of before.

“We could go inland,” you murmur at last, tired and ready to be done with this. “Can you swim in freshwater?”

“I need the salt of my Father’s domain,” he answers, flipping onto his front and moving over, folding his arms across your knees and resting his head upon his hand. You shift the book so it doesn’t get soaked, a well-practised motion now, and distractedly reach to run your fingers through his hair and down to massage to soft skin behind his ear. It fans as he trills, shoulders slumping in pleasure.

“…There are salt lakes.” You turn the page, focusing despite the tug of his fingers in the fabric of your shorts. “I need to check… Perhaps something could be arranged, so long as I’m not written off as a madman.”

“You  _are_ a madman,” Adelphos- goodness, you  _do_ need to shorten that- answers helpfully, and you swat at his ear, though it doesn’t halt his attempts to stealthily undress you. “I consider it part of your inexplicable allure.”

“You only like me for my singing.”

“Considering I still like you when your throat is too full of my tendril to sing, I doubt that.”

And now your cheeks are burning.  _Wonderful._

 _“I-”_ You groan and set the book aside, because now your shorts are around your knees and he is grinning at you like he solved a complex riddle, tail coiled under him like the body of a serpent. “Adelphos- Gosh  _darnit_ that name is  _terrible_ for snapping. Do you have nothing better?”

“Why would you care how well my name is snapped?” He asks plainly, as your sodden shorts vanish entirely under the surface and are pulled from your legs, which he wiggles between determinedly.

“Because you are a terrible sport and an awful brat-” Your voice wavers as he leans down and kisses his way up the inside of your thigh, eyes wicked and bright as they fix you in their light. “-and make it  _very hard_ to stay irritated.”

“I can make other things hard,” he coos, the tips of his nails grazing the shaft he is doing a  _very good job_ of proving that with.

You want to tell him he’s awful, and pointedly move away. However, that would require having any sort of actual willpower, and his breath is terribly warm and terribly close to you. The hand that was meant to push him back curls into his hair instead, nails grazing his scalp as you urge him nearer.

His tongue is long, alien and flowing, the pointed tip leaving a buzz down your skin and stealing the breath from your lungs. He’s dizzying, too much for your old bones, though when he’s around you or within you you feel so young again it ceases to matter. When his fingers slip over your skin and leave scratches in their wake you wonder how anyone could ever deny his existence, because here and now he burns like the fiercest flames, searing his reality into you with ever touch of his soft skin and ever wash of his shuddering breath.

You are blessed that it is you who he came to, that the threads of your lullaby were what coaxed him to the shore. An old song taught you to sing to those who swam in the deep, and though all your life you dreamed of pretty maidens with hair tied in shells and smiles that could dazzle Aphrodite, it is their brother you called and their brother you have, your legs wrapped about his shoulders and your hand tight in his glimmering locks.

Each time he meets your gaze you fear his eyes might swallow you whole, so deep and placid as they are, a calm ocean where once was a storm.

Still, you cannot look away. They are far too beautiful to deny.

Your hand pushes the book further as you draw him in, until all you feel is heat and flow, and all you can manage is his name, gasped out in tight tones that betray how easily you come undone.

He glitters with lights that answer in tune, and all your worries are distant, and mellowed, and can wait just a few moments more.

.:.

“Jake- Will you please  _stop_ \- Just-  _Jacob Harley stop laughing this instant.”_

To your surprise, your grandson does in fact wheeze to a halt, though you still hear the odd giggle and twitter. You roll your eyes and rub the bridge of your nose, and consider you are far too old for this.

“Sorry, sorry-” He takes a deep breath, audible down the phone line. “I just- you haven’t spoken a peep in ten years and then suddenly you want me to believe-” -a snort- “you have a  _mermaid_ in your  _pond.”_

 _“_ A Merman,” you correct wearily, and he starts laughing again. “ _Jake-_ ”

“Gosh, how silly of me. A  _Merman._ How could I ever forget! Do apologise to your chum for me, won’t you?”

Ade is watching you quietly, tail flipping the water up and over his head to keep it cool, and if you had a blasted computational device to just send an  _image_ \- But you don’t, and Jake is right to think you insane. You still creep out here sometimes to check you aren’t hallucinating.

“You told me your family was dead,” Ade says at last, as you cover the microphone and bash the phone to your forehead.

“May as well be. Jacob is blood but his mother…” Your voice settles into silence, before you manage to force out a strained, “we never quite got on. She thought I was mad for wasting my life at sea, I thought she was wasting her life on plants. One day I came home to a note and an empty house, and that was that.”

“It is usual for Mers to abandon our young as a rite of passage,” he replies sagely, and you stare at him until he shrugs. “At least we welcome our young back, should they avoid the sharks.”

“Well I  _would_ welcome my young-  _my grandson,_ if he stopped laughing like a hooligan!”

The last bit is aimed firmly into the receiver, and Jake gasps his way to a halt, breathless as he apologises without a hint of guilt.

“Good gravy, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?” He huffs and hiccups, and it damn well serves him right for laughing so much! “Grandpa, I’m going to come up there just to see if you’re feeling well, the cabin fever might’ve knocked you for six and you don’t even know it-”

“And if you get here and I’m telling the truth?” You watch Ade roll in the water, before he hauls himself up onto the opposite bank and picks you a daisy, swimming back to you with his gift proudly between his teeth.

“Then I suppose I’ll haul your Mermaid-  _Merman,_ pardon- into my truck, and drive him here myself.”

You take the daisy and smile as your love noses your leg.

“I’ll make sure I’m packed,” you murmur, hanging up before you get another witty reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art from this chapter by Chofi.](http://my-friend-the-frog.tumblr.com/post/121126640233/ok-i-didnt-expected-this-au-to-get-this-much)


	3. Sons of Old Poseidon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two become three, and a home will be found; but what waits there, in the mist and the dark?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ade's POV._

_Of noble blood are these fair seas,_  
_Split and cut by wave on wave-_  
_For safe passage we can plead,_  
_Drag us not down to our grave-_

_Below the waters still and deep  
Their guardians ‘er_ _e never sleep_

 _A man’s a stranger to the sea_  
_Let me pass oh merc’less one-_  
_So let me home, God, pity me  
_ _Oh Sons of old Poseidon._

 

 

Harley learns the old songs quickly, the ones that lulled you to sleep when in the folly of your youth you drifted beneath the boats of his kind and listened to them shake the water like the softest summer current. He sings them with such a strong tenor that you can’t help but simply settle and stare, knowing you have lit like the most eager of bulls mid-mating season.

He tells you you sing a baritone, and together you find a harmony that is sweet and light as moonlight on the water. The notes flow, a melody that steals your breath and has your heart singing as loudly as your lungs, drawing you to him until you are curled around him again and leaving more marks across his shoulders while he runs his fingers over the flushing lights that silently call his name.

This man, this walker of air, he is  _yours_ , and yours alone. Let your father call a far wickeder storm, for you will weather it, and do so with your Mate wound tight around you, his being and breath now deeply ingrained in all that you are or might be. Some would call you polluted, corrupted, ensnared-

Yet you are but loved and loving; this shadow has set you  _free_.

Freedom was never admittedly something you equated to a pit in the earth, layered with oiled skins and filled with stale water, but the fact even this little hole is more a home than your vast ocean ever felt is rather telling. The colours and smells of the land are odd, and different, but grow more fondly thought of with each passing hour. These flowers, he tells you, he planted on hands and knees, and cut his finger open on hidden flint that had him cursing the soil for weeks. This pile of rocks he collected from each shore he has ever set sail from, and brought them back to remind him silently of where he has once roamed.

Harley finds the polished pebble from the beach you argued on, and you cup it in your hands, tasting the past upon it. You ask if you will have more stones to add when all this through, and he smiles softly as he reaches to cup your face in his hands that are coarse and split like the dirt.

“Perhaps, lad,” he answers at last, and you wonder why he calls you lad when your age is so vast compared to his, though you know now you will not outlive him. You would rather waste and fade in his arms that face a future where he is not beside you, but you dare not speak so for fear he will try and save you from a choice that is yours to make.

 _He_ is your choice, whether or not he would be happy with that if he understood all that entailed.

Harley takes the pebble and rubs his thumbs across it, smiling as he starts to sing again. You watch him, until your chorus rises to meet him, his hand finding yours and your fingers tangling together like the notes that fall into place, braided across each beat into a medley no one voice could manage alone.

But you are  _not_ alone.

Harley glows not with light, but with  _spirit_ , and by the deepest Sisters, he is  _blinding_.

You cherish that this creature is yours, and sing until the song is silent, and the waters calm and still.

.:.

It’s barely dawn when your sleeping half is thrown into waking by a roar on the wind, ears fanned and alert before you’ve ever fully become aware of the rumble that carries low to the ground. Some lurking beast has set upon your sanctuary, you fear, or something worse that brings such a foul stench to the air as the one that makes you recoil into the water.

You are  _useless_ here, trapped in a cage that needs no walls; for all is air, and dryness, and no son of the sea can walk upon it as the clay men do.

So you call, a screech that will carry, a warning and a ward in the same breath. A light goes on in an upstairs window as the glass cracks, and when Harley shoves it open the whole thing shatters and falls about him, a rain of glitter and fire-blasted sand that chimes upon the tiles like rain.

“Ade-” He calls down in a fluster as you toss and turn in your pool, waves crashing over the side as your body twists out a tide. “What’s wrong, what’s happened?”

“Something is coming!” You hit the side and grasp at it, pulling yourself up before you surrender to the weight of your tail on dry land and drop back into the water, submerging to muffle the scream of frustration. Is this how he felt in his tiny boat, at the whims of the ocean and all the fears it must have brought? Is this what he willingly did time and time again for you, to sit upon his fragile vessel but know you were there with him?

The roar is loud, and he recedes from view, so you settle your heart and your rage.

It goes silent and you slump down against the skins your bowl is swaddled in, closing your eyes and praying whatever made such a hideous sound is not something that will have you surfacing to the scent of blood and loss.

When the surface breaks, you are filled with an aching relief that it’s by a dark hand you know, and quickly push up to grasp it gently and run your thumbs across his skin. Harley is talking, softly, and you break your nose and eyes through to air just as he settles on the edge of the pool, dipping his legs into the water.

Your ears fan wide when you see he is not alone.

You can recognise his blood from the slope of their noses and the set of their eyes, but the boy is far younger and far less marked by the world. His skin is smooth and softer, edges left gentle by the kind touch of youth, and his eyes hold no depth in them like the ones that drew you in like Anglers’ lanterns. The hold only shock, disbelief, and no trust in the vision before him.

Others have looked at you like that, and they are the ones who died chasing you.

Only one ever made you chase  _him_.

“I really should’ve bet money on it,” that elusive man hums, reaching out to coax you nearer. You swim forward enough to grasp his knees, and as you raise your chest from the water the young one gasps, covering his mouth, as though even with your face as it is he expected you to be some kind of shark from the shoulders down.

“That- must be a costume.” Father give you strength. “It can’t be- He can’t-”

“Your Young is stupid,” you tell Harley sweetly, resting your chin on his leg and poking his thigh until he pets your hair. He laughs, twisting your locks between his fingers and lightly stroking your ears until you can’t help but soften the set of your shoulders, small coos urging him to continue the soothing motion.

“In all honesty, he’s hardly more surprised than I was when I hoisted you up, dear.” He smiles, shaking his head. “Never caught anything so heavy before, and then there was a myth in my net and it was calling me such  _foul_ names… I tell you, that night I checked if I’d swapped my water for ale when it slipped my mind.”

“You air walkers have no faith in your eyes,” you answer, purring below it. “I shall have to look for you; at least I trust what I can see.”

“He’s talking,” the Young squeaks, and you share a long look with your love that informs you the pain of parents on the dirt is the same as it is below the waves.

“Yes, Jake. He is, isn’t he?” Harley looks over his shoulder, beckoning this Jake closer. “Come here, boy, he won’t bite- Not when he doesn’t want to, at least. This is Ade, and you’ll note I spoke no word of a lie to you. Ade, this is my Jacob, my daughter’s son. He lives by a salt lake to the south, and by his word I do believe he owes us a ride.”

“Did he come with the roar on the wind?” You look Jake over, slowly, and at least the set of his muscles is strong, even if his bearings disguise it. He looks like a warrior who would just drop his blade. A predator who has blunted his teeth and clothed himself in sponge.

“Does he-” Jake stutters to a halt at the disapproving look he is given by his Elder, clearing his throat and beginning again with a gaze that almost-  _almost_ \- finds your face. “Do…  _you_ mean my truck?”

“I do not know what that word means.”

“It’s, um. A metal… box. That I ride around in very fast. It goes, um-” He makes a noise with his lips and tongue. “And… sometimes beep. Or honk, I suppose.”

Air walkers are the strangest thing in this world by far. You stare at him in disbelief.

“I… I guess you’ll see, soon enough!” His smile is stretched as thin as his mirth, and you can taste his fear from here.

You draw far too much enjoyment from smiling at him, baring your fangs and watching him shrink back in dismay. 

.:.

“It is a boat that rolls,” you repeat, because it annoys Jake  _immensely_ when you describe this  _truck_ of his that way. The way he grinds his teeth is audible and delightful, a sweet song of misery you treasure almost as much as the symphony your share with his Elder. “It is a poor one, though. It is too heavy to float, and too small to be of use. I barely fit in here, and my water is spilling with each turn we take.”

“Did anyone  _ask you_?” Jake mutters, hunching further over the wheel, and you push the window further open, leaning in and reaching to pet at Harley’s hair, feeling the tremor of his contained laughter.

“I was trying to allow you time to accommodate my amazing ability to speak.” You smile at Jake as his eyes meet yours in the mirror between them. “You seem to be adjusting to my existence quickly, do you not? My methods are working.”

His knuckles go white and he turns the next corner much faster than seems necessary, your tail flipping off the edge of his truck and taking a huge wave of water with it.

“Friggin’ fishy-flippered  _floozy_ -”

You have even  _less_ idea of what Jake is saying, more often than not, than you do of what your lover spouts when Harley gets excited and his vocabulary becomes downright ridiculous. How they can possible treat you as though you are the confusing one, you have no idea.

“Be nice, Jake,” Harley chides, and your suspicions that you were being called something impolite, yet  _again,_ are confirmed .

“ _Bite me_ ,” Jake answers, face dark; you snap you jaw and he pales rather quickly. “Not- Not  _literally_ , it’s an  _expression_ , I just meant-”

He never explains, falling silent instead. You prefer him when he minds his tongue, and pays no mind to yours.

“ _Ade_ ,” Harley slaps your hand, and you whine as you recoil. “You be nice too, tuna-fish.”

You aren’t sure when  _tuna-fish_ became a term of endearment, of when you stopped being so bothered by it, but when he says it in his comforting voice you find it hard to mind at all.

“My water is all but gone,” you huff maturely, rather than admit you acted out of turn. Harley sighs.

“Well, we’ll be there soon, and I did bring my bucket.”

“I will  _not_ be  _watered_ -”

“Oh  _do_ be quiet, love,” Harley interrupts, and Jake’s lips twitch in amusement, much to your annoyance. “You’ll do what your damn well told, and you’ll like it too.”

“ _Whipped_ ,” Jake whispers, and you make a note to torture him later until he tells you what that  _means_. Harley slaps him soundly across the back of his head with a crack, and his wince is almost enough you’ll let it pass.

Not  _quite_ , however.

“Pull over so I can wet the whale.”

These creatures will be the death of you, you decide, but from irritation or embarrassment? It remains yet to be seen. 

.:.

For the second time in as many days you are woken by something in the wind, but this time it is no sound you cannot place. The roar of the truck is faded now, a comforting wash that drowns out most others, and you doubt even your ears could pick up much from outside it.

What wakes you is a scent, old and raw in air edged with a familiar salt.

You push yourself up from the skins you had bunched up to settle on, breaking the surface and grasping the edge of the truck-bed to peer into the late-night mist, gathering over the grass and hiding the waters that must be beyond. If this is where you have been headed-

No, you must be mistaken, for this taste is older than this land, and those who walked in its presence are long gone.

The truck halts, and when the roar fades it leaves a silence that deafens you, your ears broad and seeking for something, anything, but the lap of water and that oppressive quiet. You are left disappointed.

Nothing is here. You breathe and try to uncurl the knots from your spine.  _Nothing_ is-

Jake’s door opens with a sound that shoots off through the dark, and you leap in place, hissing in alarm. He stiffens and stares at you, and you both calm slowly, panting at each other, his hand slowly releasing his shirt where it had grasped the space above his heart.

“…Good  _gravy_ , you made me jump a  _mile_ -” He draws in a calming breath, shaking his head. “Something rubbed your scales all up the wrong way?”

“This place is not empty,” you answer shortly, turning your gaze back to the eddies of grey and white against the faded blue. He laughs nervously, turning his eyes out towards the same depths.

“Well, no, I mean- We’re here. But only us.”

He clears his throat, and glances at you as you growl deep in yours.

“…R-Right, mate?”

The mists shift, and for a moment you think the swirls catch the lights of the truck and gleam like eyes, fixed back upon you. No sooner have you tensed than the moment is passed, and all is quiet, all is chokingly still.

“Right,” you repeat, softly, listening to Jake wake Harley as you breathe in the salt, and let it wash away the traces of a ghost that cannot be. 


	4. A Demon Lies In The Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a man, who stands upon the shore, and whose gaze alone is enough to tear flesh from old bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ade's POV._

_Heave ho, and pull the rope-_  
_Hear his cry ‘cross the morning,_  
_Heave ho, away we go-_  
_And hear the sea’s fair warning._  
  
_Heave ho, and row, and row-_  
_Hear his mournful thrashing-_  
_The wind is high, the ice is low,_  
_And oh, the waves are crashing-_  
  
_Heave ho, make haste below,_  
_A demon lies in the deep,_  
_Heave ho, hold fast the rope,_  
_Or in his arms ever sleep._

 

 

The salt water calms you spirit as soon as they help you slip into the placid lake, the chill bite at your tail welcome and refreshing. You make Jake yell in surprise when you splash him with your enthusiastic jolt into deeper waters, and when your surface and blow out a long stream of fresh, beautiful, perfect water, he’s still glaring at you, clothes soaked and hair dripping.

You’re in such high spirits that you laugh, deep and open, and dive backwards into the heavenly hold of the water, so open and free.

This is no pit in a garden, and though it may not be the ocean, it will do- oh, it will _more_ than do, for this water is  _yours_ now, and you can be safe here, safe with your love and his Young and the sting of salt upon the breeze and the current.

The thought of a figure in the mists is far from your mind as you plummet and grasp a handful of silt between your fingers, letting it rush out in a plume of blue-gold and silver as you dart back up towards the sparkle of the sun. It’s like you’re swimming for the first time, and your lungs are full, the ache is gone, this world is brilliant and new.

You cannot walk upon the land but oh, here you can forever be at shore, and no longer will the storms of Poseidon threaten the boats that come to you bearing their precious, beloved cargo. He is safe, and you are  _free._  Free, and loved, and  _home._

You break the surface and laugh, spinning lazily with the eddies you left behind before you gather yourself and dip just below the water to race to the short. When you are close enough, Harley rolls up his trousers and wades in to meet you, catching your face with his hands and planting kisses all across it as you rise up to meet him with a bright smile. He is warm in the water, and though you cannot help but grasp him so he cannot slip away again, this time you are both at ease, and your blood flows heated for him.

“Perfect,” you murmur, between soft kisses to his jaw. “This is perfect.”

“I’m glad, love,” he hums and finds your lips, catching them in something too quick and too chaste for your liking. When you try to pursue them, to pull him into something that might match the hot vent in your belly, he laughs and cups his fingers across your mouth. “Jake doesn’t need to see this, come on. Once I’ve had my rest- Then I’ll come see you alone.”

It has you whining, the lights upon you flickering imploringly, but Harley holds you in his amused yet firm stare until your shoulders slump and you slip back into the water, watching him hobble back to the beach with more of a pout than is becoming on your face. Jake is rubbing his cheek, his eyebrows high.

“Well I’ll be a dancer at the solstice fair,” he murmurs. “A merman in my lake. Gosh. What a fool Dirk’ll take me for when he visits this way.”

“Who’s Dirk?” Harley enquires lightly, though you see his muscles grow tight as yours do. He squeezes the fabric bunched at his knees, Jake’s laughter mixing with the patter of droplets scattering across the sand below him.

“My pal- well. I’m not sure what, really, he just- He lives around the water, somewhere, never did find where. Walks this way when the day’s nice enough, or the bugger just wants fed and can’t be assed to get his delicate hands messed up in meat and oil.” His voice slows as he looks between you, and he blurts a more nervous snort. “Oh! Oh, cripes, no, he’ll be fine- We don’t have to tell him about Ade, do we? Doubt he’d believe it anyway! Jiminey, I still scarcely do, so he’s a long shot and a half.”

“He can’t know, Jake,” your lover makes clear, and Jake runs his tongue across his lips, nodding regardless of the hesitation.

“I know, I know. I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

“You better.” You didn’t mean it to sound such a threat, but he pales, ducking backwards and scuffing his feet, leaving grooves in the sand. “I have already taken enough risks with your kind, and my luck has been too good. We cannot stretch it thinner.”

“And we shan’t, no, this is it, I promise.” His tone is sincere. You calm and sink to your nose in the water, watching them stand and survey you before they look to one another.

“The house is this way- I’ll help with your bags.” Jake scurries away, and Harley glances back at you, pausing in a silent question.

“I’ll be fine,” you tell him warmly, and he smiles, inclining his head before he follows his Young.

Your expression slips away as they vanish from your view, the lack of wind and wave finally cutting into your joy. There is something overwhelming, lingering just on the edge of your awareness, a pressure that is there at the corners of your mind. With a scowl, you throw it off, and plunge into the darkness.

These waters are  _yours_ now, and Father help any who seek to take them from you.

.:.

It’s the third day, that the Stranger comes.

You’re probing the bottom for shells and pebbles to gift your love when you  _feel_ something, gnawing at your mind, eating away at your peace. You jolt and drop your trove, snarling at nothing when the wave of discomfort crashes over your senses and has your vision brightening to the urgent glow of adrenaline pounding in your veins.

Your first thought- your  _only_ thought- is  _Harley,_ and you abandon your morning’s work to push up to the surface instead, swimming hard and fast against the pressure of the lake until you are just below the air, catching yourself barely a moment before you were open to the world and all who might be looking your way. The childish mistake is barely avoided, but thank the spring tide you avoid it nonetheless, and with forced, calmer rushes of water through your gills, you paddle towards the shore.

There is a man, and were you not hidden by the light and the set of your scales, you would think he was looking right at you. Unlike those you know and care for, he is not of the mud and the moon; he is bright like the sun, his hair white as the foam that washes about his feet, and his eyes are not things meant for the land of the legged.

They are fire, and wrath, and cut to your bones as they fix on your impossibly, his lips drawn tight over teeth you fear would seek your blood.

“Dirk!”

Jake’s voice shatters the moment, a breath bubbling out of you that you hadn’t noticed you were holding. That devil-gaze is broken, the unnatural light of them dimming as they turn towards the dark-skinned walker of air who bumbles his way awkwardly down the grassy slope that drops onto the shore, his smile too open, too naive-

This thing he smiles at, it is not like him. It will eat his flesh and crunch his bones.

“Dirk, I thought I spotted you! Thinking about taking a dip?” Jake touches the pale thing’s arm, and though you tense, slender fingers rise and slip between his, tightening amongst them to hold his hand like that of a lover. “Awfully cold, chum. You might want to leave it for a month or two.”

“Nah, I was just thinking,” the beast he calls Dirk smiles, and though it is with fine teeth and no malice, you can taste the deception on the ebb and flow of the subtle tide. “Got lost in my thoughts, you know how it is. Start down one road and bam, there’s another one, a couple left turns, and before you know it I’m lost in downtown daydream, off and away with those gears turning so fast I got steam out my ears.”

He speaks like one of them, and Jake’s laugh is so calming you might think you were wrong, were it not for the slow-fading ache in your mind, and the memory of his eyes, burning too bright.

“You’re ridiculous,” Jake murmurs softly, too soft, and ducks his head in to brush their lips together. Perhaps he trusts you are still hiding, because he looks nervous in the act, and you feel uneasy having seen it. This was something private to him, and you have pulled back his fragile curtain and stolen the moment away. Dirk cups his cheek, pressing their foreheads together, and doubt wells in you again, starting to flood the empty pit the presence left and make you wonder if you were, perhaps, imagining…

For you  _have_ been confined longer than you care for, and they do say stale water makes you mad. The spark of a sun catches bright eyes might set them blazing, and as for his pallor, well- it is not unheard of for your brothers to be dark, so why not for the walkers of air to be so light?

Perhaps you have been too on edge, and a stranger in your territory has set off sense long dormant.

Yes.

That seems likely.

“My Grandpa’s staying,” Jake announces with a grin, and it draws you from your own mind, back to the world of the waking. “He’ll be here quite a while, wasn’t doing so well alone. Figured the peace here might do him good.”

The lie is told so smoothly you’re actually quite impressed.

“Does he know?” Dirk answers tensely, and your hackles raise as soon as they’ve dropped. So there  _is_ something! Why would Jake not tell you if he knew-

“No. No, I never- But I don’t think he’ll mind, I really don’t.” Jake splutters a laugh, and you edge closer, gritting your teeth. “All this time I had my briefs all bunched but he, uh- Well, seems he would’ve been a better sport about it that I thought, what with him being in a similar position.”

_He swore not to tell-_

_“_ Wow.” Dirk’s eyebrows raise. “You were panicking about telling a guy who likes dudes that you like dudes.”

-oh.

You deflate significantly, and sheepishly recede. That- is acceptable, and Harley has told you of the stigma that would haunt you both even if you were of his ilk. You gather enough by the way Jake shuffles closer and steals another kiss to tell you this is hardly about  _you,_ exactly.

“I didn’t know,” he explains, in something of a whine. “He didn’t exactly talk to me, did he?”

“Hey, dude, chill. S’okay, I’m just messing.” Dirk smiles and nudges him, eyes soft and so  _human_ that it’s oddly easy to forget the way they pierced you. “I’m glad it’s gonna work out, okay? Come on, chin up,  _old bean.”_  Jake glares at the attempt to copy his voice, and you dip a little deeper. This conversation- it’s not for you, and you’re struggling to remember why you thought it was, what brought you here.

The thoughts won’t come, stuck in quicksand somewhere deep in your mind.

Jake takes Dirk’s hand, and leads him up and away from the shore.

It’s only when you’re back collecting your shells from the silt that you realise his feet left no prints in the sand.

.:.

Lingering beneath the shadows of rocks in the shallows is an old habit, and each time your nose breaks water you can steal a quick breath, scowling when each one brings a hint of  _him._ It is not safe yet, not safe to call, and without  _legs-_

You slash your tail angrily through the waters, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake.

You are  _useless,_ even in this vast expanse. It’s just a bigger bath, just a deeper pit, and you can do  _nothing_ but worry and wait until your love can make it to the shore. What if he  _can’t?_ What if he needs you, and here you are, tied to another world, to another side of a mirror that neither of you can break.

You scream through the depths, and they catch your voice, steal the echo so it does not break the waves that the sharp wind of the night has brought. You knew he was awful, you  _knew_ it, and yet in that moment you could have done something, the thoughts all but vanished. You  _know_ he took them, know he muddled you so you did not strike. You were played and left worthless when you could have defended what you care for most, and now- and  _now-_

Once more, you break the surface to taste him on the breeze, but this time the taste is strong and overpowering as a hand clamps across your mouth and hoists you up enough for a second one to seize your gills and choke you.

You thrash, and his arms solidify, mist coming together into sharp focus and flowing backwards until it pools into his face and his eyes that burn,  _burn,_ blaze with distrust and vengeance for a crime you have no part in. Though you claw at him, beat your tail to pull yourself down, he holds fast, and this time his bared teeth are fangs with which to tear you apart, just as you  _knew_ they would be.

“ _Who are you?”_  He growls it, voice resonant with age and song that are forgotten to your mind but ring ancient chords in your soul. Around you, the waters are angry, whipping into a foaming frenzy as they beat against you from all sides. “He is  _mine_ as is this place _,_ and you are  _not of my waters.”_

Your voice is silenced, but you feel him in your mind, clawing away at the barriers you try to force into place, his reaching touch grasping for the answers he demands. Every part of you tightens and tenses as you try to drive him out, but his power is vast, and you feel weak as you crumble and flinch away, eyes fluttering when thick mist and ocean spray coats your thoughts and lets him open the ones he wishes most, your memories glittering like pearls under those eyes that see straight through you.

You know this touch, for it is old as the seas that birthed you, and woven into the essence of the deep. The Undine are a memory your blood has born without your knowledge, but here and now as he manifests before you, it rings out clear as the horns of the ships you followed in your youth, and leads you to just as terrible a risk.

All at once, his presence is gone, and he releases you. You splash into the water and gasp, choke down sweet liquid and shake your head to push it through your gills as they fan and pulse wildly.

Dirk- that cannot be his name, but it is the only one you know- drops with you, and below the water you  _see_ him, what he cannot hide from the lake. You were wrong, he is not some humble guardian here _,_ this  _lake_ is  _him,_ these waters are his home more than they will ever be yours.

He is beautiful, and  _terrible,_ a thing of light and grace that barely has a flaw to it, but for the smatter of speckles over his skin and the scar some weapon left long ago across his shoulder. He drifts, but it is not with the water- the current shapes to him, follows him, and his hair is woven from the sun itself, a vivid mane about his face, and his eyes that are the brightest stars of the dark night sky.

Dirk is calm now, the waters just as placid, and as he lingers before you a wash of awe has your head bowing before you can stop it. He swirls closer like a morning haze comes over the sea, inevitable and barely there while consuming all that he touches.

“Son of Poseidon, I walked these waters long before your father even thought to tame the oceans.” There is no friendly tone to his voice now, no lightness or ease to his words. He speaks with all the dignity and weight that he is owed, and you cower, made weak by your insignificance. “You father has no place here, as you knew well when you sought to outrun him, but nor do  _you._ You have come into me without seeking my blessings, and mark me, I shall not forget.”

“I want nothing from you,” you plead, voice hoarse, here where it should flow so easy. “I just want to be with him, and safe, that’s all!”

“If my boy did not care for him I would kill you.”

His words are blunt, and the possessiveness with which he speaks of Jake is a weight on your mind, inescapable and harsh. You manage to look at him and regret it, the expression on his face something like you think the deep ones see before the shadows in the dark swallow them whole.

“I don’t want him,” you answer, and one too many times in far too few days, you are once again  _afraid._ He searches you with his gaze and something more cutting, pierces into you and recedes only when he is satisfied with your honesty.

“The boy is mine, and if you try to take him, I will take your love for the debt.” The Undine retreats, recedes, but still you feel him in all the water that surrounds you, both a haven and a guardian to keep you in line. “Tell them nothing of me. If you do-”

He does not finish the threat, but he does not need to. You curl in on yourself, and that focused presence vanishes, spreading into a duller awareness that fills the water with life you cannot believe you did not  _feel._

You abandon your post, swimming down to the comfort of the silt, and trust that he has not harmed them, because you have no  _choice_.

The Undine watches, sleepless and ancient, and your fingers tremble as you gather your shells, praying you do not take something more than you are allowed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fanart of Dirk by crescentmoonrider](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/122544656832/he-is-beautiful-and-terrible-a-thing-of-light)


	5. Salt Blood In Ancient Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fourth lingers, and though his face is young, his eyes are oh so _old_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Harley's POV._

_Remember, remember, the whispers on the breeze,_  
_They sing of times forgotten when the Ancients ruled these seas,_  
_They sing of times when waters spoke bitter to the skies,_  
_When bitter salt was left by bitter hearts and bitter lies._  
_Don’t forget the tales we tell, the airs do softly speak,_  
_Don’t forget the time before the strong bowed to the weak,_  
_For though the water’s calm now, soon hark, the thunder starts,_  
_Fresh runs the blood of men, salt blood in ancient hearts._

 

 

There is a most unpleasant feeling on the back of your neck, like someone has cracked an egg in your hair and the cold insides are running thickly down your skin. Try as you might, it will not fade, and you feel the hairs prickle and tense as your gaze stays fixed firmly on the boys before you.

If a Mer in the lake holds your heart, what’s not to say there’s a ghost breathing down your neck? The doors of what you thought was mere lunacy have been flung wide by Ade and his ilk; you are not sure you wish to see what lies beyond them.

Perhaps your growing realisation of the things that may lurk just out of sight is what has you so on edge about this young man Jake has his arm around quite comfortably, clearly at ease, while  _you_ find yourself clenching your jaw to try and steady your expression. The fact he is unfamiliar is a bother to you in itself, but nothing you cannot overcome.

Whatever fear is crawling under your skin disputes that, however.

“Dirk,” you repeat, with an attempt at a smile you think comes off more a grimace. “Yes, Jake mentioned you, if I recall.”

Dirk’s smile is as thin as the rest of him, all of him so pale you’d think he was one of Ade’s lot if he wasn’t sporting a workable set of legs. It isn’t quite the typical pale, it’s more... something opalescent, a sheen to his skin, but you can’t tell if you’re just seeing things after so long with only your tunafish for company.

“He’s, um.” Jake’s fingers tighten, release, then dig in again, a nervous habit he hasn’t shaken since his youth. The catch of his teeth against his lip is just the same, and you wait, patient, as Dirk raises his own hand to brush his fingers to Jake’s.

You have the impulse to pull him away, but you contain it.

Jake just smiles quite suddenly, like all the tension has drained from him at Dirk’s reassuring touch. He focuses on you more clearly, and continues without the worry in his words, announcing rather brightly, “he’s my other half, boyfriend, whatever you want to call it. And he’s swell, I promise, you’ll like him.”

Oh. Well then.

While the admission is surprisingly tame, beyond your paternal instincts flaring up something fierce, it has you feeling downright concerned. It’s nothing to do with the obvious, no, if anything you’re glad Jake had the heart to tell you, that perhaps you can have one more thing in common with him after so long. What worries you is the nagging thought that his eyes aren’t quite  _right,_ that somehow they’re a little  _too_ bright. The thought that he calmed all too quickly, and told you so plainly something that was apparently troubling him just a moment before.

Nonetheless, you smile.

“I’m sure I will, Jake,” you lie smoothly, a skill you’re far too adept at. Your gaze shifts to Dirk and you give him a small nod rather than the hand you would offer anyone else. Your irrational mind is convinced that letting him touch you is a terrible idea. “It’s a pleasure, lad.”

“Sure is,” Dirk replies, with a smile so false you could believe he’s stolen it from a painting. “Jake told me you’re staying here for a while?”

“For the imminent future, at least. He insisted.” That’s the lie you agreed upon, and you know your Grandson well enough to know he will have stuck to the letter of it, so the disbelieving downward twitch of Dirk’s lips has yet another alarm clanging in your head. “I’ll be sure to let you have your space, though. To be young and in love isn’t something I wish to interrupt.”

Oddly, he flinches at that, the stern cut of his face giving way to something more hesitant. The moment you’ve noticed, it’s gone, and you start to doubt it was even there at all.

His smile returns, fake and plain, though when he glances at Jake you think perhaps it grows a tad more earnest. That may just be wishful thinking, but given you don’t trust what you’re seeing at all...

_I’ll have to look for you._

You will need to talk to Ade, to air your thoughts and worries. Perhaps he will be able to see without the same worries and muddlements that ail you. You laughed off the implication that he saw clearer somehow, but here and now you are beginning to believe it, seeing ridiculous things on a boy who has done nothing to imply he means you harm. False he may be, but false means little; the deeper ache of worry is much worse than just  _falsehoods_ could create.

It reminds you of the taste in the water, when it dragged you under and flooded your lungs. The unnatural edge that told you it was not some common current seeking to take you to your grave.

“I’m happy for you, Jake,” you lie to your Grandson, and the smile on his face is so genuine it breaks your heart.

You excuse yourself to your room after that, and pretend not to notice the burn of Dirk’s eyes on your back as your climb the old stairs.

.:.

His eyes haunt you, as you toss and turn on the bed, woken from a fever dream by an image of them blazing with fire.

His eyes- they are terrible things, and you are more convinced of your fears with every ragged breath you draw in, hot and raw in your throat.

The boy is young, but oh-  _oh,_ his eyes are  _old,_ and how you did not see it  _sooner-_

Without a care for the time of morning, you dress and hurry down the stairs, and head into the haze, towards the shore and the only comfort that can still your pounding heart.

.:.

When you crouch on the shore, the water is cold under your fingers, an icy bite that has you shaking your hand to try and clear the buzzing chill. It’s yet another strange occurrence, one that has you lightly chewing the inside of your cheek. You’ve been at sea for many years, and the cold is no stranger to you, nor something you feel so swiftly after all this time; this frosty nip to your skin is nothing so simple as the cold of the water.

Something is wrong, and you are not blind enough not to see it. If only your sight were clear enough you could put everything together and know what  _it_ is.

“Ade!” You call softly, your voice carrying in the morning mist. The thin clouds shift, parting and merging across the still water, until the first tremors begin and ripples make their way to you, his shadow barely there beneath the silver surface. It’s a relief, when he breaks through to air at your feet, but nowhere near the near-frantic look of thankfulness that’s fixed in his features as he raises himself up enough to seize your shoulders.

“Harley _,_ oh my  _Harley_ , you’re fine-” Ade grasps you, pulls you close, his talons clawing across your shirt to grab for sheer life at your back. He chitters and chirrs into the curve of your neck, planting kisses there that are so light and needy you can’t help but roll your head away to let him in easier. With little else to do under his weight, you carefully adjust and sink down to the sand completely, gasping and laughing breathlessly when he pulls his tail entirely free of the lake and drops himself heavily in your lap, his slender, scaled body wrapped around you in a protective circle of much more comforting coolness.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” You murmur, stroking his slick hair. All he does in response is whine and shake his head, ears dropping to press downwards and that tail squeezing closer. It’s all so unlike him, so fearful and wrong...

Perhaps you are not so blind as you thought. Perhaps there  _is_ a reason to feel the itch that still has not lifted from your nape.

The feeling you are being watched is creeping up your spine, and you are no longer so quick to dismiss it. You wrap your arms around your love, broad as he may be, and whisper soft comforts without ever naming what it is that you suspect has you both on an equally tense edge.

“You must be careful,” Ade whispers, rubbing the tips of his nails up and down your spine. “This lake is old, Harley, from long before my Father even set his sight to this world. We cannot bring forth the storm from its soulless heart.”

When you look down at him, he is staring back at you, something insistent and vivid in his gaze. Those eyes still comfort you, your faith in them absolute, and you consign his words clearly to your memory, to pull apart what he is telling you when you are away from these waters.

“I trust you,” you murmur, leaning down to press a long kiss to his lips.

“Only when I am myself,” he answers oddly, and once again you burn it into your thoughts, take what sparse truth he can offer you under the gaze that haunts you both.

Far too soon, you release him, and he slips from your arms into the water. You thought bringing him here was best, but now you realise you have done something terrible, even if you couldn’t have known; for you may fear the beast, but Ade must dwell in its belly. You may see it lurking in a boy’s fair eyes, but he lives and breathes it and can do nothing without its weight upon him.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, long after he is gone.

The waves are rising, starting to lap closer to your feet, and with only your instincts to rely on you pull back, and hurry to the house before the lake can catch you in its hold.

.:.

_Undine._

You did not know the word, before tonight.

Jake’s computer is hard to navigate, but he helps you, asks what you’re looking for. You mumble some cheap explanation about new shanties for your sweet, and with something of a flustered expression he excuses himself before he has to be involved in something clearly too embarrassingly romantic for his liking.

Once he is gone, you offer up the pieces, and find what whole they make.

Something old, something soulless, something that changes the hearts of men.

The old stories spill out before you, and you swiftly soak them up, scribbling notes upon your paper with what steadiness you can manage. This creature, it is powerful, limitless, all the wrath of the water made whole and given breath. It has fearful might, unmatched beauty, but at the cost of the soul that it was denied.

Is this myth real? Is this where Ade sought to lead you?

When you were told such things by a man whose  _tail_ was around you, perhaps you should be more open minded as to what is  _real._

So is this creature that you felt in the water somehow the same boy that first lit the winter in your heart? It’s probably terrible that your first thought is jealousy, that Jake’s creature can walk beside him, while your Ade-

You swallow the thought away with a gulp of whiskey that soothes the pulsing pain in your head, putting the bottle down too hard and focusing on what matters.

Jake may be in danger, and this thing may be altering his mind. You cannot trust him, much as you would wish to, and Ade is unable to assist you...

You are alone.

Considering how long have you have spent with nothing but yourself, considering how long you thought there was nothing  _but_ a lonely future for you, the thought stings fiercely. You do not wish to be alone any longer. You wish those you love and care for to be beside you, but this monster has taken that from you.

The thoughts make running easy to think of, but you are not so weak, and though it’s hard you push the thought away and ignore the growing dull ache behind your eyes when you focus back upon your work. You throw yourself into the stories instead, and gather what little you can from them. Anything you can use to try and get back what you lost so quickly, that peace and normality - as much as  _anything_ can be normal now - that you want so desperately.

So what can end an Undine?

Hah!

Love-  _Love!_ How cliché. You almost laugh at it, scrubbing at your beard as your tired eyes sting under the light of the screen. How long have you been sitting here? Lord, you don’t know, far too long and not long enough. It’s late, you know that much, the moon full outside and the house quiet, Jake long since creaked up the stairs to bed. To find that love,  _love,_ is what can fight this creature seems preposterous, and  _useless._

How do you make a monster fall in love?

The thought is answered sharply, and your lower your hand, gaze drifting into empty space.

_His smile grew more earnest._

Perhaps the creature is already falling.

You rub your temple as the sting in your eyes grows stronger again, shaking your head to dismiss the ringing in your ears. Something is- not right, something is- hard to focus on, like a noise just beyond hearing, a shadow in the corner of your gaze. The room is sparkling unnaturally, hazy as your eyes water, and you grasp for your ears as you realise there is music in the air that you can barely make out, something that’s wrapping around your mind like water flooding your thoughts-!

You are drowning without moving, losing consciousness without falling asleep, and as you try and call Jake’s name there is wetness in your mouth and wetness behind your eyes, the room spinning as you tumble from the chair with the effort of trying to stand.

Dirk is in the doorway, and his old eyes burn like the sun.

He grins at you with fangs for teeth, and your last thought before you fade is that at least now you’ve seen the boy’s honest smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fanart of Dirk and Harley by crescentmoonrider](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/123260419297/you-are-drowning-without-moving-losing)
> 
>  
> 
> And that's where we're up to! Hello there, cherubs, 'tis I, the Khem. Moving this to Ao3 so it can be more coherent. I hope you have enjoyed the journey so far! This fic will be continuing on Wednesdays, albeit it quite late.
> 
> Comments are always welcome, and thank you so much for the art and love I've already received on Tumblr! Any questions about this AU or its characters are welcome, too, come give me a bell if you have thoughts.
> 
> If you want me to see anything, tag it #Khemi or just submit it to me :)


	6. A Shadow In The Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley is missing, but what good is Ade, trapped in a lake that serves as his tormentor?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ade's POV._

_There's a storm coming, lad, said the captain at the prow,_   
_There's a storm in the air, and the wind's blowing foul,_   
_There's a shadow in the water and a bite upon the breeze,_   
_A lie is in the sunlight and a shiver in these seas,_   
_There's a storm coming, lad, get on your knees and pray,_   
_We can't outrun Poseidon and his wrath is on the way._

 

He doesn't come the next morning, and you know then that something is wrong.

You struggle, of course you do, slam against the rock and the sand and  _scream_ into the air, calling forth all your anger, all your fear, to let out a cry that echoes far into the mist. Does he hear it? Does anyone? All that returns is silence, but for the mocking lap of the waves, tormenting you with a sound that once was your greatest comfort.

You will kill this monster, if he has taken your love from you. If he has done  _anything_ to harm him-

The wind has a roar on it, but it is not the one you let loose. It rumbles and rolls and trembles through the ground, and where once you feared it, now your hope swells and you pulls yourself to shore, dragging yourself up the sand until the grasping ice of the lake releases you. You pant, ears fanned to the mist and eyes darting, heavily dragging yourself higher, praying,  _praying,_ for the roar to find you.

When the truck scatters the mist and swerves up alongside you, you can't help a frantic chitter as you reach for the metal and start to drag yourself up it. The door opens, and whatever disappointment you feel when Jake leaps out is washed away by sweet relief as he scoops his arms under your tail and lifts you with a grunt, until you slide forward into the water filling the bed. Even fresh and cool, it is a breath of fresh air after the oppressive spirit holding you down, but before you can even give a thanks Jake is scrambling back in, slamming his door, and speeding back into the fog with a deafening blast of sound.

He is alone, and your chest constricts as you force the window open, leaning in and grabbing his shoulder tightly.

_ "Harley!" _

"When we're away, not here,  _please!_ " He doesn't look at you, but his voice is quaking with furious terror, and the choke of the mist tugging and scratching at you, trying to pull you back, grounds you enough you let him be and close the glass across. You bear your teeth to the receding lake, bracing your mind with a hissed warning.

The angry howl that responds is awful, ancient; it is still fading when the truck punches a hole through the thickening mist, speeding out to fresh air and safety, however fleeting it may be.

.:.

You come to rest beneath the leafy canopy of more trees than you have witnessed in all your days, and some other day you would lose yourself in wonder. Now, there are far more pressing things, far worse thoughts praying on your mind. You shift around your shallow, false pool, until Jake emerges and climbs up, rolling his pants up and settling on the edge of the bed with his feet dipped into the water.

"Will he follow us?" The son of air murmurs, and all you can manage is a short shake of your head. "Oh, good. Cracking. That gives us a spot of time to gather our wits and mull this all over, I suppose."

"The beast has Harley." It is a statement that you already know the answer to, though you note wryly that Jake flinches at your choice of words. "How do  _you_ know of it?"

"I've known for, ah- For a while. Well- No, that's giving myself too much credit. I _suspected,_ but I never had anything certain, I just knew..." His head dips, his shoulders tensing. "I started getting terrible headaches, when I thought about leaving, or started asking questions. When I pushed through them- It was like my head filled up with water and everything was all heavy with it, hard to make sense of, and even when I could breathe, I... I started to miss it? It was easier not to think than to deal with all these things, rushing around my brain. Besides, who would believe me? He only let me get Grandpa because he knew Grandpa was the sort to come looking, and even then..."

"If you were his then, why are you not now?"

"I- I don't know. I woke up and I could think, and it... Oh, it hurt, something awful, but when I came downstairs to go find him I found... It all smelled of salt and blood, and he was clever enough to clear whatever Grandpa was looking at on my computer, but Strider always over-thinks things he does, always forgets the obvious. He left his notebook, probably didn't even glance at it. Who writes things down these days, eh? I think once I read it it all started making sense." Jake's voice goes silent, his expression troubled, and you hate how now,  _now_ of all times, you notice how much he and Harley look alike. "Maybe he was too focused on Grandpa to notice me, so I... I took advantage. I knew you'd know more than I did, but from the notes, I knew we needed to be out of his reach, so..."

"We _fled_ and now Harley could be _dead_ -" You start, but Jake cuts you off with a quiet laugh, hollow and small.

"Dirk won't kill him," he answers flatly. "He won't hurt me that way."

"Do you love him?"

Jake looks surprised by the question, and blinks slowly, looking down at his hands. His fidgets, fingers twisting over one another before parting, tugging at his clothing instead.

"I don't think I've ever... thought about it, with my mind clear like this. I think- I think I could, you know? But..." He frowns, wetting his lips. "Not like this. It's too much, I'm not myself, I'm not... I think he's trying as hard as he can. I don't think he knows how to not be this way- but he has to learn."

"You're really willing to forgive him?" You can't help the level of disgust creeping into your tone, and Jake fixes on you, his eyes intense and fierce.

"Maybe not if he were human, but he isn't, is he? I read what Grandpa said, I know- I  _know_ what he is now, and I know what he's missing, what he doesn't  _understand._ He could've killed me, Ade, but he looked after me instead, even if he did make a mess of it." Jake sets his jaw, then adds on a final, pointed, "you forgave Hass."

"I-" It takes you a moment to recognise the name, heard only once or twice in passing. "That was different! He just caught me in a net and he let me go as soon as he realised-"

"But he didn't know any better when he fished you up, did he? He didn't act without needing shaken to his senses?"

You could argue, you know that. You could yell at him, until your voice is hoarse, of the danger and the error in his ways. Still- you know there are those you once knew who could speak just as harshly to you, for thinking so highly of a man they would say can never understand you. You bite your tongue, and look away, hearing Jake let out a long, huffed sigh.

"So what do we do?" He asks. If he is expecting some grand answer, he is to be disappointed. All you can manage is a shrug, a frustrated splash of your tail, before you turn onto your belly and duck your head into the water, escaping him as best you can. It's incredibly mature of you. You may have no depths to plunge to, but your Father be damned if you aren't going to  _try_ to escape the truths before you, the truth that  _Harley_ is in  _danger_ and you can do nothing but sit in this damned tub and scream silently into the skins that keep the water within it.

When you surface, Jake is flipping through a book you've seen Harley write in before, his lips pursed around the odd mouthed syllable, his eyes flicking across the pages too fast to be taking it all in. You move over, hesitant, and rest on the wall of the truck beside him, peering curiously over at the cream pages his fingers are sliding across.

"...I likely know more of the Undine that he has found," you mutter, and Jake shakes his head, raising a hand dismissively.

"I'm not reading that. There are other things in here; he's done a lot of research since he met you, you know. Always did have too many books on your ilk, though I expect he thought them all fantasy until you went and dropped- er, floated up out of the blue."

"He has?" It's odd, but you'd never thought of him caring for such things, of your race and your being. You pull yourself up higher and look over the sketches, between scribbles, some familiar to you, things you know and had never thought you could explain to him; but here they are, captured in his hand. He went looking, and found answers you had expected too complex for him to grasp, but absorbed them all with the same sweet understanding you have come to love in him.

He is too much for you, this creature from another world.

"I wondered- Maybe there was something else in here. He's always been one for the right thing at the right moment, or fate, or whatever he calls it." Jake sighs long and hard through his nose, turning the page. "There's notes on Dirk, at the end, and a whole book on you before it. What you need, where your kind comes from, the tales of your kind becoming like us, us becoming like you, stories of Poseidon and all that he could find on your habits, I wager."

"Nothing I do not..."

Except there _are_ things there you do not know, and you look at Jake, who stares back with a weariness to his gaze, one hand rubbing the pain from his temples.

"...Could you read it to me? The stories written here?"

"There's a lot, Ade."

"Not all. Only some."

Jake squints at you, but nods, spreading the book across his knees and settling in as you lean against his shoulder enough to watch the images he exposes with each new page. You murmur a request, and he looks at you oddly, though he turns his attention back to the tome when you insist it's needed, now, perhaps.

He starts to read, and you listen with ears wide, and wonder if the gamble you feel building in you is madness, or if maybe you understand enough of what Jake does not to know that some risks might be just what sates the demon from the deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd say we have 2 or 3 chapters left of this fic, depending on how things play out? We're near the end, anyway! Thank you for reading so far and I hope you enjoy what comes next :)


	7. Lost in the Sway and Swell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the bottom of the lake, an old man listens, and maybe in the end he'll understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been 84 years but hello, welcome back, this fic is now updating to finish in the next week or two and I hope if you're a new reader or returning after the long drought, you'll enjoy the rest of what I have in store.
> 
>  
> 
> _Harley's POV_

_Oh, the men who died in the waters deep,_  
_They have such tales to tell,_  
_But their tongues are thick and they cannot speak,_  
_Voices lost in the sway and swell,_  
  
_But those men who slipped from the ancient ships,_  
_Their souls sing in their sleep,_  
_And an older tongue than Poseidon’s sons’,_  
_Carries songs stole down in the deep._

 

This is most certainly a nightmare, but you have seen too much in these past months to think it could be anything but a waking one, and that all the parts of you that threaten to deny it are far outweighed by the part of you that took a golden man with sun-spot skin into your arms and heart. Your horizons were once as wide as the ocean is broad, but now they are also as deep, all that you had never thought to see no longer impossible, all that you had never thought to know still waiting somewhere down in the depths to be found by determined hands.

You had not expected the descent to be so literal, however.

Once more, you stretch your hand up, skin glittering silver as the air around it catches and reflects the light of the sun that is distant and distorted above you, a wash of white in a strange muddle of blues that are broken by white ripples and shafts of light which drift like fine drapes on the current. They do not reach you, catching across the distance and fading into the waters, and here with your feet in silt and over slippery stone, the brightest light comes instead from a closer source.

You lower your head as another rush of air comes from nowhere for you to breath, bubbles slipping up and across your cheeks and vanishing up towards the far-off sky.

Dirk glows as if he has bathed in all the sun the waters stole, skin pearly and constantly in motion as the luminescence that marks it collects into crests and ripples across him. It catches on the soft sun-spots that sparsely shine like stars through the northern lights, eddying around them and washing out into a gentler sort of pale, collecting up in his hair that is woven white shine and drifts as a crown his regal features carry easily, his ears fanned wide like Ade’s but flawless and whole, unlike the gold you left a deep tear in with your own knife and furious hands.

That fury, the beach, it all seems a lifetime ago.

Your captor drifts with the lake, and sometimes comes apart entirely into gleaming motes upon the unseen paths the water dances in, circling you or spreading out across all the lake, or collecting and passing around you close enough you feel his presence like a pressure and an aching in your bones. Is this what Ade felt, you wonder? His fear is a vivid memory, the way he held you like you might disappear, and guilt once more thickens in your throat as you realise it was this man, this _thing,_ you had unknowingly abandoned him to.

Perhaps it makes sense that in a world you’d never seen, you keep making blasted missteps every time you try to move towards safety.

“It’s beautiful down here,” you chance at last when Dirk’s eyes dim enough you can look at them without it stinging, and his ears spread and then dip, a motion you know well enough to know there’s no threat masked behind it. His head tilts slowly to one side, and you wonder how you sound to him when all you can hear is strange and muted. “I never thought I’d see something like this, not unless I was drowning.”

“It is not for the sons of air,” he answers, and his voice is soft and everywhere, coming from the waters all around you in one gently chiming chorus. “Poseidon took this place from you, and what was once shared became chains and fading memory.”

“You’re older than him, aren’t you?”

“Than the Sea Father?” Dirk regards you impassively, idly reach as a small shoal of fish come by you, stretching his fingers out to part them and then slowly guiding them back together. You’ve watched him fetch crawling things from the silt and set the floating off to higher rocks, watched him untangle weeds like a father at work on his daughter’s hair, watched him dance lazily along with one of the larger fish that loomed out from the shadows, hands pressed to its scales and his murmurs a song alien and unsettling in your ears. When he fixes on you, he is calm and still, but in the moments he forgets he comes to life, fluid and graceful as he lets slip something softer that the sharp edges you know will cut you open if you fool yourself into thinking that gentle display means he’s not a risk.

“Aye, than Poseidon,” you nod your head once the fish have moved on. “You remember when it wasn’t all so apart?”

“I remember when the water cradled life at its first moments, before the air grew jealous and beckoned it to split apart. I had no name then, nor a mind; we were one and a flow and a whisper before there were words, and long after we would hear our calling and become ones in a many, not many in a one.” The currents shift as he lifts his head, following the new shape of his body and wrapping it in motion. “Poseidon came after; clay men made him from their dreams and stitched him together on a mountain-top. They told him the water was his, and he forgot he was a faith-fanned false god and thought their lies the truth.”

“Is that why you came in-land?”

“I was always here, once I was myself.” Dirk pauses, and for a moment you think he’s stopped, before his voice comes like a whisper, a haunting refrain the makes the bubbles escaping you shiver as they pass upwards and out of sight. “There was an open path to the sea when I first found my place to dwell, my arm stretched out to the young children who began there long after I had settled here in the springs that have long since run dry. But the new children of the sea were _his_ , and he did not care for the old ways so nor did they, and they let them pass from what they spoke and knew. In time I let go of what I had once held open, for when my place was ignored, I had no reason to stay; the river ran dry, my reach drew back. I remained here, and protected those who still remembered.”

“You were alone?” You can’t imagine such a life, and for a moment all you see is how much of a child he looks, even as ancient as you truly believe he is.

He doesn’t look at you, ears dropping as the patterns upon him fall still and turn to cracks in glass.

“Clay creatures came and went,” he tells you eventually, “but only one heard my voice as I sang.”

“Jake?”

“He came to swim, one night in his first summer season here, long before he built himself a place of brick and brood to stay. He was… young, then, and there was still a mother to keep him from the water, but as she slept he crept from the home they dragged here on wheels, and he walked out into my waters.” Dirk cups his hands, and the water in them parts into a small spray of bubbles small pearls of air that collect up and form a young boy swimming, a memory played out above his talons. They curl, protective and possessive, no doubt left that the image he is showing you belongs to him and him alone.

“I was going to kill him,” his voice rings distant just beside you. “I sang like Poseidon’s daughters, a melody I stole in spite, and I drew him deeper each time he dipped his head, and each time he listened longer my song took away his thoughts of needing breath.’

‘But he was… different. He did not follow blindly, as those others who had come to kill what was not theirs to demand in sacrifice.” Dirk lifts his hand, and the small image of your grandson rises with it, turning and twisting in a search from long ago, catching Dirk’s fingers and peering through them. “He… heard me. He did not come without a thought, but with far too many, and all of them reaching for me.”

Above his lower palm, more bubbles rise through his fingers, and this time they form into something like Dirk, but far more slender and inhuman, more like the lake and less like the land.

“I had not been called since I turned my back on the ocean, and yet still more eons before, undoubtedly. I had... forgotten, how it felt to be known.” His own image cautiously moves between his claws, then slips upwards, miniature hands catching on his palm as it peeks over it and watches the ghost of Jake, still deep in its own little search. “I should have dragged him down to keep his silence, but I did not. Instead, I… sang for him, a song of the deep that he might hear it and know me better, and he listened, and… he knew.”

As he lifts his freed hand above them, the two ghosts come together, Dirk’s memory of himself drifting and swimming in slow circles around Jake as the boy finally settles and paddles in place. At last, that creature draws close, reaches and touches Jake’s chest, and then you startle when Dirk claps his hands together with the distant rumble of thunder, the images crushed back to bubbles that glitter upwards in a rush.

“In the winter he was gone, but in the summer he returned, and each time I heard deep in his thoughts that he had come for me. I learned from him, what I should be that he might have me, and as I reshaped myself I did not question why my chest was filled with the crashing peaks of a storm when I thought of a day he did not come back.”

“But he did come back,” you remind him, careful to avoid the ire in his tensing shoulders and the dimmed pattern that begins to move like the dangerous waters he describes. “He came back, and he stayed, and he did that for you, didn’t he?”

“I asked him deeper than he knew to answer with words, I sang the question into his soul and let it linger. The next summer he came alone, and he built, and that harvest-time I left the water as his dreams had shaped me, and I met him along the shore.”

Dirk summons up another image of your grandson, but this time it’s not meant for you, held close in his hand and looking up towards him. For a moment, he blinks and his eyes are soft and amber, his lips parted over teeth that are no longer sharp. Then it passes, and he turns away.

“Sometimes it hurt him to be alone,” he hums into your ear across the space between you, “so I took the pain from him. Sometimes he questioned where I came from and why, so I took the worries the same. I could not face him leaving, so I kept him here, and happy-”

“He was a prisoner,” you say without thinking, and Dirk’s skin flashes dangerous and bright.

“He was _safe,_ ” he answers, and you flinch as his voice hits like a thunder in your ear, a cacophony that tears into you instead of floating soft and sweet. “He was _content._ His mind _called to me_ when it had fears and _asked_ me to take them, to steal his nightmares and the times he doubted, to let him drown in all I was and for it to become like his breath.”

“You could have explained!” Water presses in, threatening your shimmering armour, the breath you draw more strained. “You could have let him choose!”

Dirk shakes, and the water whips around him, the silt rising with it to slice through the void and trace each sharp change in direction, each tightening noose that pulls close to him and refuses to loosen. You feel the same tightness, the pressure of the lake that he was holding away from you starting to crush you down, your legs buckling as you fall to your knees and struggle to keep yourself up from the rocks the rising sand has exposed.

You’ve often wondered how you would perish, but being crushed by the rage of a myth at the bottom of a lake you had stood within and breathed as easily as air is definitely a novel surprise.

“ _Who would choose me?_ ” His voice is terrible, inescapable, shaking the ground beneath you as your arms start to bow under the weight of all he is. “ _Who would choose this?_ ”

You had almost forgotten that you were a prisoner, too enamoured by the world you’d never seen before, but now your cell is shrinking and horribly apparent. You are left with no false illusion that he intends to let you live once your worth is done, if this anger does not do for you as it is.

“He woke without me and his choice was to _run,_ his choice was to _leave me!_ ” Through the silt that makes it difficult to see, you pick out Dirk’s form, curled in on itself with claws that have grown long and jagged and dark buried in his blackening hair. His voice is all, violently lashing at you with every syllable he screams. “He woke free of me and all he thought of me was _fear!_ ”

Darkness is closing in at the edges of your vision, and you can no longer find any air to draw into your burning lungs, the pressure barely manageable and water flooding your mouth with the next gasp you take.

Dirk turns to you as the silt falls around him, his eyes nothing but fire and his body twisted with the cruel lines you knew were there, the depths that will drag a good man down if he trusts the placid surface. He lunges forward, moving in a blur, grasping your throat and forcing your head up to face him as the painful press of his horrid talons does little to rouse you back from the nothingness you are slipping into.

You should never have come here.

All you wanted was your love to be free, and now you’ll die in the dark as the price.

“I don’t want him to hate me.”

The voice lingers, and it’s oh so sad, a melancholy moan that fills your fading thoughts.

“ _I don’t want to be alone._ ”

.:.

For the second time in your life, you wake after making peace with death.

The first thing that draws you out of the darkness is cold, biting under your skin, unpleasant but the _real_ sort of chill that you learned and befriended at sea. The feeling of water on you follows, lapping around your neck gently, swirling around you below as you drift, and then at last you feel soft palms cupping your cheeks and tilting them upwards, the water rolling back and forth against you to urge you to breathe.

And you _do_ breathe. You gasp, and splutter, and cough up water, and grasp the wrists that hold you as you blink salt water out of your eyes.

Dirk doesn’t look particularly impressive, as he stares back at you and heaves out breaths of his own. His hair is dim and slicked down against his skin, his finned ears slumped and dull. In his eyes there is no unnatural light, and in the amber that remains all you can see is a child who is afraid, adrift in a world he has lost all sense of his place in.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, voice faltering and flat and no longer any kind of song. “I- I’ve never lost control before.”

You breathe until the burn in each breath fades enough you can find your own, hoarse voice, squeezing his wrists and nodding in his grip. “...It’s alright, lad, it’s alright, just… take it easy, I know this is hard.”

“I don’t understand why it’s only him who-” Dirk shivers, fingers curling against your damp skin. “It’s _too much,_ it never stops and I- I can’t just make it go away like I could before.”

“You know what’s happening, don’t you?” You wet your lips despite the water on them, tasting the salt that remains. What happens when what was empty ends up full? What happens when ice water catches fire?

“I’ll never be what he needs me to be, I’ll never be like him.”

“I know it hurts.” You do, you _do_ , every time you sit on the limit between worlds and remember that edge is the only thing you can ever share, the only thing that can ever last. For one moment today you stood in the deep and wondered if this is the world he sees, and knew you won’t ever see it again; and your world is a shore and a bath and a truck to Ade, it’s a prison you’ll never make big enough to be a home, it’s a life you know it’s selfish to force on him no matter how he loves you.

“I know it hurts,” you say again, and not all of the salt water on your face comes from the lake. “I know it’s hard, I _understand_.”

“No one understands,” Dirk’s shivering again, from something deeper than the cold, an ache that hurts you still and you can’t imagine feeling having known nothing else before it. “I tried to be what his mind made me and I took too much of him, I took everything and I can’t give back what I’ve taken, what I’ve done.”

“Then set him free.”

You look across the surface of the water, the reflection of the unreachable sky above, the realm that you can never touch and only sit and covet. You think of standing on the lake floor and seeing the air the same way, the world you’ve never understood and never will, a small looking glass into a life that was lived at sea that you stole just like everything else you took from him.

You gave up _nothing_ , but he gave up everything, didn’t he?

“Living a half-life for the sake of a selfish old fool who knows he’s doing wrong- That’s no life for anyone, is it? That’s not something they deserve.” Of all the people in the world who’d understand it, the ancient creature that trembles like a newborn in your arms is the only one here and now who might grasp any of how it feels to try to bridge two worlds but never really do more that choke a part of something far vaster than you that you dared to claim as yours. “It’s easy to keep them, I know it is, I know that it feels like that’s better- but.”

You meet his gaze, and think no one is more afraid of the Undine in this lake than the boy named Dirk he might inescapably become.

“If you love him,” you say, and you’re not sure who you’re speaking to anymore, “you have to leave him be, you have to… set him free.”

“He’ll leave me,” Dirk croaks, not stifling the weak sob that shakes him. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“He’ll be free to live the life he deserves,” you answer softly. “Life will go on. He’ll be happy when he finds his place, and someday, you’ll find yours.”

Dirk closes his eyes, his shoulders slumping and his grip on you growing loose as he breathes in and shakes his head. “I remember when the worlds were one, and the sea wasn’t jealous of the air.”

You laugh, wet as the lake that’s icy around you.

“Ah, lad, that’s the secret of it all. The air’s just as jealous of the sea.”

.:.


	8. Upon the Shingle Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then there were four on broken paths, and choices left to be made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ade's POV_

_He took my hand in the promised land,_  
_Led me to the bottom of the sea,_  
_And the distant sun couldn’t warm this one,_  
_Cold blooded as the fish was he._  
  
_But deep below where the mermen go,_  
_He told me why he’d come to me no more,_  
_Now he’s memory no one but I believes,_  
_His blood upon the shingle shore._

   


“The mist is gone,” Jake murmurs when you’re close enough to tell, letting the truck fall to a purring pause as he leans over the wheel to stare out across the clear valley. “It’s… never been gone, not when Dirk wasn’t with me.”

“It was him, as was the water.” Your ears twitch, strain and alert just as your other senses are as you draw in the crisp air of the night and do not taste a taint in it, waiting to ensnare you. “Something is wrong. He should not have left this place without cause, he _cannot_ leave his water without reason… I do not understand.” With a hiss, you slip back from the open partition, wetly dragging yourself to the other end of your moving pool and pressing up like a whale seeking air, curved towards the sky as you breathe it and find nothing to reward your search. “ _Where is he?_ ”

“Could he have come after us? I don’t doubt he was upset enough to try.”

“No, _no,_ he could not move so far from his waters unless-”

But the Undine was not so far gone, was he? You would have tasted in him, surely, that gentler taint that crept beneath his ancient skin and turned the salt water in his veins to blood. What you saw in his eyes upon the shore when he stared at the boy who would steal his birthright from him and never know it, it was a sign, true- but could it have been so late an hour, and you really have been blind to it?

Jake makes the truck stop trembling, climbing out of it and coming back to offer you his arms.

“Could you tell in the lake?” He asks, watching you wearily, and you nod.

“Aye, but it’s a way to carry me.”

“I’m sure I can manage.” He glances at the water, lips paling as they press together in thought. “If Dirk’s still here I don’t want to cause a fuss of it and make him panic. Better go in soft and see what’s waiting, and do our best with whatever mess we get tangled up in when we get there.”

“You still intend to save him?”

“It’s my fault he’s the way he is.” Jake doesn’t look at you, but you hear his voice grow set, all the maturity in it the Undine buried for fear of how it made him feel, you suspect. “I think it’s time we tried whatever’s between us when we’re both sure where we stand.”

You consider him, and the thought of all the mistakes you have made on your own path, how alike the creature in the lake you might’ve been had things been oh so slightly different. You were blessed with your path, you know now, and he was cursed with his; but by the grace of the men of clay, you will both find something better. “I wish you well in the life you will lead, Jacob Harley.”

“And you, Adelphos.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, more of himself in them now they’ve had so long to clear. As you drag yourself over the edge and gracelessly into his arms, he staggers, but braces as good as his word and starts to carry you to the water with only a small stumble to his strange legged steps. “...Are you sure about this? That it will work?”

“I know the life this Dirk of yours has led is not one I would wish on any; even the cruelest Sisters can feel, and the weakest whelps have a chance to know warmth in themselves. His end will be a miserable one unless he is given strength to survive it- and it is selfish, that I would give that, and you know better than to think it is not.” He _does_ know that, and the weight of your actions, as do you. The two of you spent far too long watching one another, and wondering, and arguing within yourselves, until Jake asked of the magic in the words and how best to use it, and you showed your own willing in the swift answer. “I have made a choice for another, as have you, and we may claim no honour in the act.”

“He’ll be happier,” Jake mumbles, trying to convince no one but himself. You nod, turning your face away to focus on tasting the air.

“By our gazes, yes,” you sigh, “and may my Father let it be truth.”

.:.

It is not the Undine you taste first on the breeze, but the cold taste that twists sickly around your throat is worse, your claws driving into Jake’s shoulders before you can stop them and your head snapping upright with a frantic chitter and wail.

You do not know the tastes of air-walkers as well as you know the tastes of your kind, but sickness is something that never split apart, and the foul scent of it wrapped around the comfort of your mate turned weak is enough to light a fire of rage and panic in your soul. He _swore_ to you the creature wouldn’t harm Harley, he _swore,_ but you _know_ the essence of the fading, and you know then that he lied.

Jake cries out when you shove him backwards, close enough to the water that you manage to throw your weight away from him and land close enough to slither the rest of the distance with several swift clawing drags of your hands to urge you on. The fearful call of your name behind you does little to still you, and the moment the waters part around you- _free of him, free of the chains-_ you bolt, leaving Jake behind you and bursting out from the water for short gasps of air so you can follow the pleading breeze that guides you closer to the awful source.

You should never have come here, never have told him you needed more than the water he first gave you.

You should never have made him feel that anything he had given you was not more than enough.

“ _Harley!_ ”

It comes out as nothing but a feral roar, and this time when you rise from the water it’s not to dive back down, pushing forward in a lunge towards the sand on instinct that has you crashing bodily into the Undine as he scrambles to try and get out of your way. Your weight forces him down into a tumble, a painful roll as the world spins- and then you’re on top of him, teeth bared and eyes wide with fire, one webbed hand tight around his throat.

Dirk wheezes beneath your grasp, and it occurs to you beneath the desire to kill him that he should not have any need to breathe.

His eyes flash, but it’s dim, and though water whips up and drags at your tail it’s easy to resist the pull of the faded magic. You roar again, not even bothering trying to form words, and the light in his eyes flashes and flickers until it goes out with a pained cry, the waves splashing harmlessly down around you and leaving him with nothing but his fear as he grasps at your wrists and tries to force you away, just as powerless now as _you_ were the first time he held you.

“ _What have you done to him?_ ”

Dirk snaps his fangs at you, straining against your palm, but when he falls back and gasps for air his teeth are smoothed down like the man he is becoming, his voice hoarse as he forces in past your attempts to smother his life from him.

“He- Too far- The water- _Heavy-_ ”

He is pointing, and as you follow his fingers all your anger drains with a rush of quiet terror and painful upset, your hands slipping away and leaving Dirk to cough and choke down new breath as you drag yourself across the sand to the hunched figure he pointed to, resting against a rock. The blood pooled darkly at the corner of his parted lips only becomes clear as you grow close, but it makes you move more urgently, chest constricting tightly and the lights on you shining to bathe him in a tender glow.

Harley does not stir. His eyes are closed, his breathing shallow but _there,_ and you chirp pleadingly at him to draw out an answer when words fail you, your claws reaching to tenderly comb through his hair and down across his cheeks. The chill of his skin is too much, and deeper inside his flesh; for lakes are cold and an Undine makes them colder, and clay like him is a thing of fire, not a thing of ice and snow.

“The water stopped listening,” Dirk tells you, and you warn him back with a hiss when he tries to move closer. He flinches away, recoiling with a hand to his own, bruised throat. “I tried to stop it, it’s always listened- and he was _fine,_ I had him breathing and well and was dragging him to shore, but then he started coughing and there was blood…”

“I think it did my lung in.”

Harley’s voice is quiet, but your attention is suddenly focused on him _intently,_ gaze darting to seek as much as you can find in his dim eyes. He smiles, and his teeth and flecked with red. “Didn’t feel it for a while, probably shock, what with nearly drowning and realising how awful I’ve been- Oh, and the cold, of course. There was the cold. Wasn’t feeling much of myself by the time the lad got me back here, but I think it was the pressure that did it.” His smile falters, a small tremor running up him as you feel him bury a wince of pain. “Crushed by an angry lake, eh, what a story to tell.”

“We will find you aid,” you promise him, and he laughs, giving you a strange look that makes your blood turn bitter.

“There’s not a medical professional for miles, and I’m not sure it’ll do much good. Maybe that’s for the best.”

For the _best_? Your fins bristle at the suggestion, hurt flashing over your features brighter than the dimming shine of your speckles. He cannot mean- no. _No._

“Love of mine, do not throw yourself away so easily.” Please, don't do it, don't go, you don't want to be left without him. “The sun will not rise if it cannot find your smile to brighten it.”

“Jake could take you back to sea,” he answers, reaching up to press his palm against your cheek. “You can go home.”

“Not when it is gone, and lost!” You take his hand in yours and press yourself into it, closing your eyes and moaning mournful into the clear air. “ _You_ are home, and you are _joy_ , and all the future that I wanted! You were my _choice_.” You smack his chest, and regret it when he shudders, instantly petting over the same place and keening softly in apology. “You were my choice, Harley. Let me be yours.”

This man of air who has shined brighter for you than any child of the sea, how can he not understand that you would give up all you have lost a thousand times more for one more day beside him? The sea is vast and beautiful and you have seen many of its wonders; but nothing, _nothing_ , was ever a wonder like _him_ , and if he leaves you nothing will ever fill your chest with the same warmth his smile has brought.

“I’m sorry,” Harley says at last, thumb moving to stroke gently over your skin. “I’m old, Ade, and I’m not like you.”

“No. You are _better._ You are _blinding._ I thought I had found my place when they begged me to leave, but in the storm they called I knew that I had been wrong, love. I would never have left without you beside me, and it mattered less to me which way along the shore it was I travelled that who it was who carried me.”

You would carry him, if he will let you. You would give him all the world, and hope it can show him even a little of all he means to you.

The moment is broken when you hear Dirk moving, and you turn to growl at him, stopping only when Harley catches your face with what strength he has left and tugging you back towards him.

“...None of that. That peace was made, even in your absence. He isn’t going to hurt me, Ade.” Harley pauses and wipes away the blood on his lips. “This was an accident, and he saved me from worse; and before, when I saw what it’s like down there… Hah. Call me a fool, but standing there for even a moment, that was worth this, I think.”

“It is beautiful, down in the deep.” And deeper still more wonders lie, and you would give him each and every one. “Few of your kind will ever see it.”

You wish you had been the one to show him, but you are beginning to remember why you are here, and if the world owes you anything after all you have suffered, you will have your chance, and have _him,_ just as you pleaded once before.

You loosen your grip on him, and turn slower, looking towards the ancient beast who stumbles like a child as he folds his arms across himself to ward out the cold.

“I need your help, changeling.” It pains you to say it, but it is why you came, it is what you know could end this. Dirk- it seems fitting now to use that name for him, as plain and air-spoken as the way his light had turned dull and earthen- He looks back at you with worry in his face, faltering back and catching on his own footprints in the sand. “ _Please_. You know what waits for you, surely?”

“The soulless can’t survive with a soul for long,” he answers thickly. “I will be as they are, but fast to burn out, and that is the price for a chance of joy.”

_Will be._ Hope rises, and you nod.

“You do not know my Father’s magic, and I know that you hate him,” you see it in his face, too, the way his lip curls before he can halt it, bitter at all that must have been before the sea had a king to rule it. “But we are not the first to want something different, nor will we be the last; and in his mistakes, he has yet made better errors, and given power to those willing to pay the toll he demands.”

“What do I gain from it? A clear conscience? I’ve killed others without complaint.”

“You would linger as many years as they are given.” Even to your ears, the desperate note to the words is clear. “Is that not what you want?”

“Why linger alone when I could fade faster?”

Ah.

You begin to _understand_.

You look at Dirk, and see the fear, and wonder how much of what he silenced in Jake was made quiet so it didn’t echo around a different mind.

“...Because you would not _be_ alone.”

By the grace of some kinder god who watches over you, the doubt in his face is quenched beneath the sound of his own name, called close enough it doesn’t take your ears to hear it. For all you swim fast, and you swam far, Jake knew better than not to follow as best he could along the shore.

“ _Dirk,_ ” he repeats as he climbs past the last crest of sand and rock, slipping awkwardly down towards you and rushing to close the gap. Dirk has gone tense, and looks as though he did not expect to see the air-walker again, let alone heading for him and speaking his name. Perhaps he thought you had come back here by dragging yourself along the dirt yourself? “You’re still here!”

“...I…” Dirk blinks as Jake’s hands cup his cheeks, raising a pale hand to touch the back of one with faltering fingers. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“We saw the mist was gone and we thought- _Dammit,_ I was scared, alright? I thought you’d gone before we could talk, that I’d scared you away, or-” Jake stoops to press their foreheads together, and once again you find yourself knowing this isn’t a moment for you to see, turning back to watch Harley as he gazes past you without the same concerns. “I had to get away so I could breathe, Dirk, but I came back, see? Never planned not to, I promise.”

“You were afraid of me.”

“I’m afraid of what I don’t understand,” Jake answers, quietly. “Aren’t you?”

There is a silence in which even Harley decides he should avert his gaze, and he looks to you instead. In the quiet but for the lap of simple waves upon the shore, you remember the morning when the storm had settled, and all was still and silent across the silver sea. That morn, the future stretched before you and you did not know where it might lead, still don’t, but you knew that you would not have to walk that path alone and that was enough to ease your fears. He was your choice, in that moment, and the moments that came before; he was your choice, and now you will have to hope he forgives you for making another in his place.

“Would you stay with me?” You ask him, and he searches for the real question, for confirmation of what all you’ve said implied.

“...Always,” Harley tells you.

You will hold him to the promise.

This thing of clay, you will reshape him, and give him all he deserves and all you hope he might desire, and when all's said and done and the silt is settled still on the ocean floor, when the rage is passed and the dawn has come on whatever wreckage that remains, you hope that he will be smiling as he was before, whole and well and free of the cold that urges him to let go when you would have him hold to you instead.

For a moment, you just look at him, and even weak and wounded he is the finest thing you have seen.

“Tell me of your Father’s magic,” Dirk asks as the moment passes, and you set your jaw and kiss Harley’s hair, and hold tight that you might weather the storm.

.:.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go, which will be out **Friday** of this week! Sorry that this chapter was late, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.


	9. The Moon in the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So a choice is made, a plea is given, and in the darkness something ancient stirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thank you so, so much for joining me on this adventure, and I hope beyond hope that you've enjoyed everything it took to get here, and everything that's to come.
> 
> This isn't the end of this AU; there's already [a Johnkat aside,](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/142932552917/hi-i-saw-that-you-were-taking-prompts-for) you can always prompt for something from it, and I'll be writing a short epilogue of sorts about these four, but that will be separate, so watch for that in the tag or on my Tumblr. 
> 
> This is the end of this part of the story, for now.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, it's been an honour to finally complete this adventure with you.

_Blood in the water, water in the blood,_   
_Dry runs the riverbed and raging comes the flood,_   
_Clay-kiln soul and sea salt heart,_   
_Worlds come together and a world come apart,_   
_A choice to be made but a path always known,_   
_Homeless wanderer, wandering home,_   
_Sun in the sky and the moon in the sea,_   
_Surrender forever and find eternity._   
  
  


Your awareness began slipping away as Ade and Dirk spoke, your consciousness kept barely on the right side of waking by Jake’s hand on your shoulder and his voice urging you to talk to him, even if it was nonsense that slipped from your lips. You did what you could, but all that slipped out was murmured songs that you half-remember, and between them apologies to him, to his mother, to Ade.

But those went quiet a while ago, now. The world is distant and shining, muted behind a ringing in your ears, and each blink is heavier, easier to relax into, urging your mind downwards into a sleep that you expect would be your last.

At some point, arms took you, held you like a child to a chest you’re drunkenly amused you recognise, the lights that spread over it flickering and blurring like stars when your glasses are taken from your face. Ade cradles you in his arms and murmurs things you can’t make out into your hair, and you pet at his skin and wonder when it got so hard to feel anything but dizzy nothingness, no more shock left in you to react even when his fingers draw your shirt away from you, when your belt and pants unceremoniously follow.

All that’s left is a calm that runs too deep, a distance from reality that’s getting more and more difficult to bridge.

In the quiet, you remember the stories you read before you knew they were truth, the tales written in old ledgers you’d thought brought on by too many days starved at sea. Tales of the songs no man could resist, sung by those whose tails billowed like clouds in the deep and who perched on rocks in the mist to sit just as captivated by the songs of sailors who passed them by. Whispers of the ancient mothers in the deepest ocean valleys, grown vast enough to swim with the whales and still seem grand in scale. Sketches of eyes that caught the light like cats’, just above the water and watching as the ships passed by down routes agreed long before their purpose was forgotten.

Is it all true? Are there creatures who tear boats in two bare-handed, and others who walk onto shore but once in seven years? Are there those who dance on the sea like it's made of glass, and those whose wails in the night bring forth the worst of all storms?

You wonder, and water laps around you, your fingers dropping to catch in the surface of the lake. It doesn’t feel cold now, though perhaps that’s simply because all of you is too cold to tell it apart, and you feel the slow descent grow smooth and easy once Ade is deep enough to swim, even with you still tucked in his arms and kept above the water enough to breathe.

You’ve never actually swum with him before, too worried of what else was hidden at sea and too lost in other worries when you came to this place. Your hands find their way around his neck, holding close to him, and you think you would have liked to swim with him, to have felt this when it wasn’t at the other end of a long tunnel that’s harder and harder to see through.

Something changes in the water, something that you feel without feeling, like the change in the air before the first autumn rain. It’s electric, crisp, fresh despite the salt bite of every wet droplet that catches on your lips, and it's only when you slip and the lake around you moves to form a swell of pressure that pushes you back into Ade’s arms that you realise dimly that it’s the feeling of a lake come alive, a spirit returned.

Dirk keeps you pressed up to your Mer, swimming with you, or around you, or simply always being just where he needs to be. You hadn’t even noticed the lake changed without him, though you suppose you were a little unconscious at the time; will the lake miss him, if he leaves? You’ve never thought of water _missing_ something, but with everything else impossible now seeming so real, is it really such an odd thing to consider?

You come to a stop, as still as you can ever be in the roll and rock of the lake, and Ade kisses your hair again, murmuring what sounds like an apology, a promise, a prayer-

And then he lets go of you, and Dirk catches you, and you choke when nothing protects you from the water you draw in with your first instinctive breath. You try and kick, push yourself up, but your legs stopped listening to you a while before your arms grew too heavy to move, and when Dirk holds you he doesn’t help you upwards, drawing you down away from the light instead.

There’s a shadow that follows that might be Ade, but it's even harder to tell with salt stinging your eyes and burning your lungs, pain driving you back towards awareness in the same instant it robs it from you more entirely, though now the darkness that seemed so ready to take you is absent. Sleep of any kind refuses to take you; you know you are being stretched far tighter than your body was meant to bear, wakefulness only sharpening as you’re dragged down towards the silt and the rocks you know lay far below.

Something rumbles, far away and right beside you in the same instant, a long-forgotten doorway being opened and a hand stretched out beyond it. The water rushes around you as fingers that long since let go reach far from here and grasp the sea; and then, in that moment, all of Dirk that is in these waters is gone, and something far louder and raw takes his place in every ragged breath you take long after your lungs should have fallen still.

_Son of the sun, fire-baked man of clay._

It speaks from between your ears, resonating through your mind with ancient grace that barely covers a roaring torrent of something worse and wilder. You startle, and Dirk keeps you still, his hands now no more than hands, his body real and present where it twists against you.

_Long have you braved my waters as though they were your home._

Another breath burns down your throat, makes your heart scream through aching beats that are forced and tight in your trembling chest.

_The air you took was ocean spray, and in your blood ran sea salt._

The words are softer, now, still blindingly titanic in scale but like the whispered song between the stars, a gentle sort of eternity. The world is distant, even as it burns more real, the waters in your chest and beneath your skin taking everything from you but the voice that has no sound and the ghost of what speaks it, a shadow in the water that makes you feel small before it.

_And you had stolen a son from me, but only out of love._

The shadow grows closer, and even with your eyes closed you can see it sharpen into a real presence, growing smaller as it moves away from the light that you thought was calling you to let go. The shade flits through the water, graceful and graceless, powerful but plain, and you know it is not with you in the lake as you find your chest light and breaths easy, your arms quick to move when you lift a hand.

_So it is that a spirit older than I yet fears me, but you…_

A hand catches yours, and it is narrow, and small.

_You are not afraid._

Either you’ll die, or you’ll finally be able to give Ade all that he deserves, and you’ve nothing to fear from either path. You’ve had time to make your peace thrice over, and you would never be anything but grateful for a life beside him, new and strange as it might be. Whatever the price is, that this magic demands, whatever it is his Father would have of you, you will give it, and gladly, even for one moment in his arms without a barrier between you.

_Do you think you are what is best for him, air-walker?_

You doubted it once, but you know now that he has chosen you, and you love him enough to trust his choice, whatever you might think of yourself. He called you home, and joy, and all that he wanted, and you would give him it all and more if a power you can do little but plead to would hear you and give you the chance.

He is all you’ve wanted, all that you could dream, and you would do anything to be best for him, as he deserves.

_Then you should know that those that fear me have forgotten the truth._

You blink, and your body is free, and strong, and the pain is a fading memory as you draw in another breath that swells oddly from your throat, the water feeling sharp and bright as winter snow yet somehow warmed beneath a summer sunset that turns everything to gold and red and then a purple that’s rich in the fingers that tangle with yours and the smiling face that forms behind them, round and soft and bright with joy in the place of wrath, and youth in the place of age.

“A mother does what is best for her children,” she tells you, hair drifting all about her and her hand turning hot like the sun itself against yours. “I greet you, son of all my seas. I greet you; welcome home.”

.:.

“Harley?”

There are hands on your cheeks, soft and easy, and something firm beneath you that stirs with each gentle wave upon the shore. You groan, and it purrs out of your throat with a motion that’s odd and unsettling, your skin prickling in its wake.

A hand tight with yours and the burn that followed; a kiss to your forehead before the world went white.

You open your eyes.

Ade is above you, glittering with the light of a thousand golden stars, all rippling across him in patterns that fill your heart with a yearning warmth. His hair is dry enough you must both have been back out of the water for some time, and as you finally place the sand beneath you for what it is, you wonder if he dragged you back to shore himself and then realise there was little else he could do.

His eyes fix on yours as he realises you’re awake, his hands sliding to tangle into your hair as he dips and presses your lips together in a firm kiss that’s full of relief and urgency, your hands lifting to hold him close until he starts to lift away and you feel a jolt down your arm, a tickle against what should be air.

You drop a hand enough to look at it, spreading your fingers wide, and feel the already heavy thudding in your chest pick up pace as the sunlight makes the translucent skin stretched between your digits glow.

It’s rather like dominos falling, after that. The alarm makes your ears prickle and move in a downright _bizarre_ way that makes you shudder, and as you gasp you feel the air flowing into your throat from too many directions at once, which makes you drive your fingers- claws- into the sand and try to push up on legs that-

_That-_

Oh.

It is a testament to Ade’s reflexes that he manages to lunge out of the way when the tail below your waist whips up in a panic and slaps into the air he was occupying a moment before.

If you’d been asked before, you might have thought moving a tail would be like moving your legs together, but _no,_ it is _nothing_ like that, it’s alien and strange and impossible to describe or adequately _control_ in the first few moments you grasp at it and shove it back down to writhe in the sand, ignoring as best you can the feeling of scales below your palms and pressure _on your scales,_ a sensation that’s rather like nails being dragged down the blackboard of your soul. The mottled blacks and greens are rather handsome, you’ll give it that, but you’re mostly giving it that to avoid actively breaking the numb bubble closing around you and keeping you from dropping all pretense of having a grip on your current situation.

Ade drags himself back beside you, putting one hand on your shoulder and then ducking his head to bury it against your shoulder, trilling softly to your skin and making you light up with a pleasant warmth that shows in a wash of green glow, dancing out over the spiralling speckles that dot your smooth skin. Despite the panic you’re expecting that to add to, the sound of him and the heat of him seems to bury it, his other hand moving down to where your skin starts to dapple into scales and stroking softly over the fade.

You realise, at last, that the world is clear, and lift your hand to touch your face and find your glasses still absent. That leads to an experimental stroking of your own features, unnervingly smooth but also- _smooth,_ and you wiggle away from Ade to move towards the water, awkwardly dragging the great lump of a thing that’s replaced your legs behind you so you can peer into the silver-blue and catch sight of your own reflection.

It would seem, you consider, as you press your own hands to your cheeks and then back through the thick jet curls that are peppered with white but not dimmed by grey, that your age carried over more directly than proportionally, an answer to a question you’d never thought to ask and are amazed to see the results of. You look like your own ghost, smiling out of a faded photograph- and you _are_ smiling, bigger and broader, shock and disbelief starting to crack under the pressure of reality, no matter how surreal it might be.

_Welcome home._

You turn and lunge for Ade, throwing him off balance when your weight hits him and you end up rolling in the sand with your tail splashing back into the water, fins fanned wide against his. You feel your ears flutter with your laugh, his skin lit by your emerald glow, and he shines in answer, his surprised cry turning to a laugh that’s just as bright and full. His hands are on your cheeks, arms, waist, and yours are on his chest, his shoulders, in his hair as you kiss him again and let a joyous chirping slip between your joined lips.

He takes your hands and your fingers tangle like your hearts, his body beneath you warm and comforting and _home,_ home in all the ways you’ll be to him if he’ll have you. The world is clear and pale like a dream, but this is the dawn of a new day to _live,_ a new life to chase into the depths you thought you’d never see and all with him beside you, no glass to keep you apart and no place he can go that you cannot follow.

“I love you,” you tell him, between each soft kiss that’s light like a promise. “I _love you._ ”

“As I love you,” Ade promises, holding your hands all the tighter with each word, each smile. “Always and forever, as the sun and moon light the sky and the sea.”

The sea, _the sea,_ you canfinally see all that it holds and all that you’d heard of as fairytales, and whatever stands in your way you know now that time and dreams have changed a father that was once cruel into a mother that is kind, and you would trust her to keep your journey safe as you follow wherever Ade might lead.

“Would Jake take us back to the shore, do you think?” You ask, and your love makes a noise of distaste that briefly worries you.

“Only if he finds a way to make his infernal land-boat larger. It was foul enough with one to carry.”

You’re laughing again, kissing his cheeks, before your own words return to you and you raise you head. “Jake- Jake! And Dirk- Where are they, what happened to-?”

“They are well, love.” Ade catches you and stills you before you can get too jumpy, tugging you back down and pressing his forehead to yours. “The lake cared enough for its once-protector to carry him safe to shore, and once he was calm enough to speak without screaming, your young took him to find something to cover himself with, despite his objections.”

“...Ah. Yes. Clothes are something he’ll have to get used to.” And something that you… apparently don’t need. You look down at yourself, patting your bare chest and gazing down towards your own tail. “Well _this_ is going to be…”

Ade waits expectantly, and you can _feel_ his worry in some way you can’t explain, lighting up your nerves and making you trill out a comfort.

“An _adventure,_ ” you finish, smiling down at him, and Ade breaths out, catching your neck to pull you down and simply hold you close. He purrs and you find the same noise rising unbidden, soft in the space between you and spreading down through your chest as you let the impulse overtake you. “I can’t wait to see your world.”

“I cannot wait to show it to you.”

For now, Ade keeps your hand in his and drags himself down the sand into the water, and you follow, excitement vibrating through you when the water laps up your arms, your chest, and then with one last familiar breath of air you plunge into the lake. You hesitate, nervousness returning, but as Ade tugs you deep enough he can float before you and stroke your cheeks you finally draw in a slow flow of water through your mouth and throat, and find it smooth and simple as breathing has always been in the world above.

You laugh and your voice sounds clear; different, but the same.

After one last glance upwards, Ade lets go and swims ahead. With water singing through your chest and veins you follow, tail weightless and welcome now you’re below, and chase him down into the depths that shine with light, and life, and promise.

.:.

Dirk looks awkward in your grandson’s oversized jeans and shirt when you finally surface and sway your way back to the shore. His hair has dried to a pleasant blonde, his skin freckled all over where once it was plain, and you are fairly certain he is attached to Jake for good with the way his arms are wrapped around your grandson and seem unwilling to let go.

Jake, meanwhile, is far more interested in staring at you, his eyes wide and his smile as earnest as it is bemused.

“Well that’s certainly something.” He whistles, crouching by the edge of the shore as you pull yourself up onto the sand with Ade settled up beside you. “Never in all my days did I think I’d see magic, or all the rest. Gosh.”

_Gosh_ rather sums up your feelings on that matter.

“It’s- _incredible_ ,” you tell him, having long given up on trying to control your downright ridiculous grin. “I never thought it would be like this; I mean, I never thought it was _possible_ until now, but…” With a laugh you flip your tail out of the water, curling it up to run your hands over your own fins, soft and new as they are. “I always wanted to see the sea, but I never thought I’d see it like this, and now… Now I’ll see everything. We- _We’ll_ see everything.”

You take Ade’s hand, and he holds yours close to his lips to kiss your glowing knuckles.

“I think we’re going to go driving,” Jake answers, looping a hand around Dirk’s shoulders to pull him closer. “Driving, maybe flying. I’m going to show him everything I can, show… show _you_ everything you want to see. _Everything._ ”

“I think…” Dirk pauses and weighs the words, the feeling behind them, his expression unguarded and full of all the things you doubt he’s ever truly felt, adoration and worry and excitement. “I think I’m looking forward to it.”

In time, Jake will carry you to the sea, and carry Dirk to the top of the world and beyond to show him all its wonders. In time, the seasons will change, and maybe the summer that follows, maybe all the ones that come after, a yacht will moor in a calm, hidden bay, and stories will be shared by voices that grow prouder of who they are and what they are becoming.

In time, you’ll settle again, and all you once were will be just another story to tell to all those who see what you can be.

Here and now, those things are distant, promises of a tomorrow that’s yet to come, a time after the storm when the world will grow again and be stronger for every blow that left it weak when the rains fell.

Here and now you are smiling, and your blood is the sea, and your future is bright like the sun.

.:.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you may find me on [Tumblr](http://khemi.tumblr.com/), where [prompts are always welcome](http://khemi.tumblr.com/ask) and you can also see my [update schedule](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/142921685067/updated-fic-schedule).
> 
>  
> 
> [Art of Ade in the bathtub by my-friend-the-frog](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/121127005042/my-friend-the-frog-ok-i-didnt-expected-this-au)  
> [Fanart of Ade & Harley (implied NSFW) by the friendly doodles anon](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/120946788487/his-panted-breaths-are-deep-but-end-with-a-short)  
> [Fanart of Dirk by crescentmoonrider](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/122544656832/he-is-beautiful-and-terrible-a-thing-of-light)  
> [Fanart of Dirk and Harley by crescentmoonrider](http://khemi.tumblr.com/post/123260419297/you-are-drowning-without-moving-losing)


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